^.  .,_  ^^ 


i-;<,;vCTICAJL 

,        CHING 


t\\  IhA 


^ms^ 


fj"    I  \ 


BRYAN 


LIBRARY 

OF    THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 

Class 


I 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 

in  2007  with  funding  from 

IVIicrosoft  Corporation 


http://www.archive.org/details/basisofpracticalOObryarich 


THE  BASIS  OF 


PRACTICAL  TEACHING 


A  Book  in  Pedagogy 


BY 
ELMER   BURRITT   BRYAN 

PRESIDENT  OF  FRANKLIN  COLLEGE 


SILVER,   BURDETT   &   COMPANY 

NEW  YORK    BOSTON     CHICAGO 


Copyright,  1905, 
By  silver,   BURDETT  &  COMPANY 


PREFACE 

More  than  twenty  years'  experience  as  a  teacher, 
half  of  which  has  been  as  a  teacher  of  teachers,  has 
led  the  author  to  believe  that  there  are  certain  funda- 
mental facts  of  science  and  principles  of  education 
of  which  all  teachers  should  have  a  knowledge. 
The  aim  in  bringing  out  this  volume  is  to  gather 
together  such  facts  and  principles,  and  put  them 
in  readable  form.  The  book  is  not  a  pedagogical 
treatise  which  assumes  a  knowledge  of  psychology, 
neurology,  and  child  study,  neither  is  it  a  text  on 
these  subjects. 

If  the  author  has  not  failed  in  his  purpose,  this 
volume  is  a  plain  statement  of  certain  facts  in  all 
these  fields  interpreted  in  terms  of  education.  It 
is  hoped  that  the  book  will  be  of  special  benefit 
to  teachers,  students  of  elementary  pedagogy  in 
colleges  and  normal  schools,  and  to  parents. 

The  author  wishes  to  acknowledge  the  courtesy 
of  the  Pedagogical  Seminary  and  the  Educator- 
Journal,  in  which  portions  of  certain  chapters  have 
previously  been  published. 

3 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGB 

I.    Introduction 7 

II.    Our  Inheritance 15 

III.  The  Physical  Basis  of  Mental  Life       .        .  24 

IV.  A  Cycle  :   Stimulation,  Interpretation,  Ex- 

pression          33 

V.    Habit 43 

VI.    The  Psychology  of  Work.        .        .        .        .  52 

VII.    Memory 63 

VIII.    Arrested  Development 73 

IX.     Interest  and  Attention 82 

X.    The  Significance  of  the  Recitation      .        .  90 

XI.    On  Relating  Work 99 

XII.    The  Stimulus  of  Success  .        .        .        .111 

XIII.  The  Individual  in  Institutions        .        .        .  120 

XIV.  The  Training  of  Young  Children  .        .        .129 
XV.    The  Significance  of  the  Second  Dentition  161 

XVI.    The  Pedagogy  of  Youth 170 


THE    BASIS   OF   PRACTICAL 
TEACHING 

CHAPTER  I 

INTRODUCTION 

There  was  a  time  when  the  branches  taught 
seemed  to  be  the  center  and  end  of  education.  From 
this  extreme  view  of  the  subject  there  has  been  a 
gradual  transition  toward  the  opposite  view,  that  the 
child  is  the  center  and  end  of  education.  This  is  pre- 
sumably the  most  advanced  view  generally  held  at  the 
present  time.  Yet,  while  it  is  recognized  that  the 
child  is  the  center  and  end  of  education,  I  think  we 
are  not  resting  upon  this  as  an  abstract  or  isolated 
thought.  As  the  transition  from  the  first  view  to  the 
second  and  opposite  one  has  been  slow  and  gradual, 
so  the  present  movement  from  the  child,  as  such,  to 
the  child  in  his  entire  setting  will  be  neither  rapid  nor 
always  encouraging. 

It  was  seen  that  arithmetic,  for  example,  is  not  the 
reason  for  the  school,  but  that  the  child  with  his  limi- 

T 


8  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

tations  and  possibilities  is  the  reason.  The  observ- 
ance of  this  fact  was  the  excuse  for  introducing 
books  on  mental  science  into  the  teacher's  professional 
reading-course.  But  the  thought  that  the  child  is 
made  up  of  soul,  body,  and  clothes  was  not  grasped  in 
its  fullness;  and,  as  we  should  expect,  we  find  that 
stress  was  laid  on  the  most  abstract  phase  of  the  child, 
and  the  one  which  would  seem  farthest  removed  from 
the  old  idea  of  the  branch  as  end  and  the  child  as 
means. 

The  first  so-called  strictly  professional  books,  there- 
fore, were  metaphysical  rather  than  psychological. 
There  was  no  discussion  of  the  constitution  or  nature 
of  the  child  as  such,  but  almost  the  entire  emphasis 
was  placed  upon  that  phase  of  the  child  known  as  his 
mind.  The  professional  literature  available  to  the 
teacher,  while  in  most  part  it  was  truthful  and  some- 
times helpful,  was  always  abstract,  heavy,  and  diffi- 
cult of  appHcation. 

The  chief  defect  was  that  we  were  not  viewing  the 
child  in  his  entirety.  When  it  seemed  as  though  the 
rank  and  file  of  the  teachers  were  becoming  reconciled 
to  the  foregoing  programme  (although  I  think  they  did 
not  feel  at  home  in  it),  we  had  brought  to  our  atten- 
tion a  fact  which  we  had  always  known,  but  of  which 


Introduction  9 

we  were  not  seemingly  conscious  —  namely,  that  every 
child  mind  that  ever  came  to  school  came  in  some 
kind  of  body,  and  that  the  kind  of  body  in  which  it 
came  determined,  to  a  great  degree,  what  the  mind 
might  accompHsh.  This,  doubtless,  is  a  great  step 
in  advance  of  anything  which  has  gone  before,  and  it 
would  seem  that  too  much  emphasis  could  not  be 
given  to  the  idea  that  the  entire  child,  body  as  well  as 
mind,  is  the  subject  of  education.  In  fact,  from  the 
absolute  point  of  view,  I  am  sure  that  too  much  em- 
phasis could  not  be  given  it.  The  time  and  energy 
that  have  been  spent  studying  eyes,  ears,  noses,  skins, 
feet,  and  hands,  with  a  view  to  gaining  a  clearer 
and  deeper  insight  into  the  physical  and  mental  con- 
ditions of  the  child,  have  been  well  spent.  All  the 
conventions  that  have  been  held,  all  the  papers  that 
have  been  prepared  and  read,  all  the  speeches  that 
have  been  made,  and  all  the  discussion  that  has  re- 
sulted from  these  things,  have  been  eminently  worth 
while.  It  is  doubtful,  however,  if  more  than  the  first 
word  has  been  spoken  along  this  particular  line  of 
pedagogical  research  by  those  who  know  whereof  they 
speak. 

The  chief  hindrance,  so  to  speak,  to  the  compara- 
tively new  movement  has  been  the  work  of  the  over- 


lO  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

ardent  but  untrained  and  unwise  advocates  of  it. 
There  has  been  extensive  and  vigorous  opposition  to 
this  movement  toward  the  educational  laboratory, 
and  some  of  our  most  experienced  and  enthusiastic 
educational  leaders,  in  the  score  of  years  that  have 
just  passed,  look  upon  it  as  a  fad  which  is  having 
its  day  and  will  soon  cease  to  inflict  itself  upon 
us.  That  this  should  be  true  is  by  no  means 
strange.  The  opposition  and  the  doubt  manifested 
toward  this  new  educational  truth  are  no  stronger 
than  the  opposition  and  doubt  that  were  shown  at 
the  birth  of  the  sacred  theories  to  which  these 
very  same  people  now  cHng  with  so  much  tenacity. 
The  birth  pains  of  ideas  are  frequently  as  severe  as 
physical  birth  pains,  and  as  in  physical  birth  the  pains 
are  proportional  to  the  complexity  of  the  individual 
born  and  the  one  giving  birth,  so  also  in  the  world  of 
ideas,  he  who  has  all  his  theories  and  philosophy 
worked  out  and  wrapped  up  and  labeled,  and  who  has 
lived  by  them  in  faith  for  years,  must  find  great  hesi- 
tancy and  mental  pain  in  breaking  away  from  them. 
In  discussing  this  subject  with  those  whose  mental 
nurture  has  been  largely  speculative  pap,  the  point 
of  contention  is  that  it  is  a  low  and  materialistic  way 
of  looking  at  a  bumian  beings  to  consider  him  as  sub- 


Introduction  1 1 

ject,  to  so  great  an  extent,  to  his  body  and  physical 
environment  —  that  it  would  be  more  pleasant,  and 
much  more  encouraging,  to  beheve  that  mind  could 
lift  itself  above  its  presumably  physical  limitations  to 
the  realization  of  any  task  or  ideal  which  it  might  set 
for  itself.  It  must  be  admitted  that  this  would  seem 
to  be  a  pleasant  way,  and  that  there  perhaps  could 
be  but  one  possible  objection  to  looking  at  it  in  just 
this  way,  —  which  is,  that  we  cannot  do  it. 

We  are  too  much  inclined  to  speculate  and  to  work 
out  fine-spun  educational  theories,  to  wrinkle  the  fore- 
head and  overtax  the  mind  and  strain  the  eyes  in 
trying  to  search  out  a  deep,  mysterious,  semi- mythical 
something  that  will  settle  things;  and  we  have  let 
the  resources  at  hand  and  at  our  disposal  go  unap- 
propriated. The  man  who  has  to  study  physiology, 
anatomy,  materia  medica,  and  pedagogy  to  work  out 
and  appreciate  the  grain  of  truth  in  this  little  formula — 
(i)  as  you  think,  so  are  you;  (2)  as  you  eat,  so  you 
think;  (3)  therefore,  as  you  eat,  so  are  you — will  never 
be  a  power  in  the  earth  from  the  standpoint  either  of 
materia  medica  or  pedagogy.  And  the  man  who  has 
to  leave  the  halls  of  any  American  college  for  some 
years  of  study  abroad,  to  learn  that  the  varying  con- 
ditions of  climate  and  the  varying  conditions  of  pestif- 


12  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

erous  insect  life  serve  as  distinct  causes  of  his  varying 
moods  and  abilities  to  do  work,  has  already  shown 
himself  so  insensible  to  his  copartnership  in  the  solu- 
tion of  life's  problem  as  to  render  him  wholly  unfit 
for  pedagogical  research. 

I  have  emphasized  this  point  somewhat,  that  I 
might  not  be  interpreted  as  underestimating  it  in  dis- 
cussing the  next  phase  —  one  just  beginning  to  dawn 
upon  us,  and  one  in  which  I  so  thoroughly  believe. 
Yet  surely  no  one  of  these  or  all  of  them  constitute 
our  sine  qua  non.  We  must  avoid  any  such  attitude 
toward  so  great  a  problem.  The  day  of  settlement 
is  not  yet  at  hand ;  we  are  even  yet  doing  pioneer  work 
on  the  frontier.  John  Smith  thought  he  had  seen 
America!  But  we  are  all  John  Smiths  on  the  James 
River,  and  have  not  crossed  the  Appalachians,  much 
less  the  Mississippi  Valley  or  the  Rockies  beyond. 

It  would  seem  from  what  has  been  said  that  there 
can  be  no  rational  study  of  the  educational  problem 
in  which  the  body  of  the  child  is  ignored  or  passed  by 
with  but  slight  attention.  And  this  truth,  born  of 
struggle  as  it  has  been,  is  finding  acceptance  on  the 
part  of  a  large  minority,  if  not  already  a  majority,  of 
school  people  and  those  interested  in  children.  To 
consent  to  a  theory  and  to  be  able  to  work  effectively 


Introduction  13 

in  the  light  of  it  are  two  different  things.  Having, 
therefore,  the  consent  of  many  teachers  as  to  the 
merits  of  this  view  and  the  need  of  its  application,  we 
will  make  it  the  purpose  of  some  of  the  following  chap- 
ters to  help,  in  a  practical  way,  in  the  solution  of  this 
particular  problem. 

Every  mind,  then,  does  come  to  school  in  a  body,  \ 
and  the  kind  of  body  in  which  it  comes  does  determine 
to  some  degree,  at  least,  what  it  will  do  with  itself 
after  it  gets  to  school.  But  while  this  is  true,  it  is 
just  as  true  that  every  child  (I  mean,  now,  the  entire 
child  —  soul,  body,  and  clothes)  who  comes  to  school 
comes  in  a  crowd,  sits  with  a  crowd,  studies  in  a  crowd, 
(and  sometimes  with  a  crowd),  recites  with  a  crowd, 
plays  with  a  crowd,  goes  home  with  a  crowd,  eats  with 
a  crowd,  and  often  sleeps  with  a  crowd.  So  it  can 
be  seen  that  he  is  a  very  much  crowded  individual, 
and,  if  possible,  should  have  something  to  relieve  the 
pressure.  I  have  often  thought  that  if  a  child  could 
pick  up  his  body  and  go  to  some  Robinson  Crusoe 
island  to  live ;  if  he  could  have  the  necessaries  of  phys- 
ical life  sufficiently  supplied;  if  by  some  special  act 
of  revelation  he  could  have  the  average  measure  of 
school  wisdom,  as  given  in  the  class  room,  instilled 
into  his  mind;  if  he  were  subject  to  the  pains  and  aches 


14  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

of  average  humanity,  but  were  entirely  isolated  from 
human  society;  and  then  we  could  have  written  out 
for  us  the  history  of  what  this  child  thought  and  did, 
—  that  with  all  this,  we  could  have  but  Httle  notion  of 
what  the  child  would  have  been  if  reared  in  human 
institutions.  In  other  words,  if  I  knew  to-day  what 
you  would  do,  and  what  you  would  be,  in  a  Hfe  of 
absolute  isolation,  I  should  know  but  very  little  — 
although  somewhat  —  of  what  you  really  will  do,  or  be, 
in  a  hfe  of  human  environment  and  institutions. 

It  may  not  be  easy  to  induce  people  to  give  their 
consent  to  the  importance  of  viewing  the  child,  in  his 
physical  setting  and  in  his  relations  to  his  natural  and 
institutional  environment,  as  the  center  and  end  of 
education,  but  such  consent  must  be  won  because,  up 
to  date,  that  is  our  most  comprehensive  child.  Hav- 
ing gained  this  point,  it  will  then  remain  to  assist 
school  people  and  others  interested  in  the  welfare  of 
children  to  some  plausible  way  of  rearing  such  a  child. 


CHAPTER  II 

OUR  INHERITANCE 

What  a  thing  is  at  any  stage  of  its  development  de- 
pends upon  two  things  :  what  it  was  when  it  started 
—  its  inheritance;  and  what  it  has  done  and  had 
done  to  itself  since  it  started  —  its  experience.  This 
chapter  will  discuss  the  more  general  features  of  in- 
heritance. 

At  birth  every  individual  has  a  given  organism  for 
which  he  is  in  no  sense  personally  responsible.  In 
most  cases  this  organism  is  capable  of  large  develop- 
ment in  strength,  health,  and  efficiency,  and  in  most 
cases  also  it  can,  through  failure  to  observe  and  prac- 
tice the  laws  of  development  inherent  within  it,  fail 
to  realize  upon  its  inheritance,  and  so  decline  and  die. 
With  this  given  organism  are  also  inherited  broad 
general  instincts,  or  tendencies  to  action  and  reaction. 
The  student  of  psychology  and  pedagogy  should  not 
fail  to  remember  that  these  instincts  are  general  and 
not  special  —  upon  this  fact  rests  much  of  the  hope 
for  success  in  training.     The  individual  is  not  born 

15 


1 6  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

with  the  instinct  to  make  definite  specific  reactions  to 
definite  specific  stimuli,  but  may  react  in  a  large  num- 
ber of  ways,  any  one  of  which  may  in  the  first  instance 
be  appropriate  to  the  stimulus  causing  the  reaction. 

The  stimulus  which  comes  to  a  young  child  when 
he  first  sees  a  penknife,  for  example,  results  in  numer- 
ous reactions,  many  of  which  would  not  be  appropri- 
ate in  an  adult.  The  child  learns  through  experience 
what  these  appropriate  adult  reactions  are  and  no 
longer  tries  to  suck  or  eat  the  knife  handle.  But  in 
his  first  days  sucking  and  biting  were  the  instinctive 
reactions  to  the  penknife  stimulus. 

It  is  a  principle  of  matter  and  mind  that  things 
tend  to  act  as  they  have  previously  acted.  This  is 
seen  in  the  letter  paper  that  has  been  folded;  in 
the  coat  sleeve  that  has  wrinkled;  in  hair  that  has 
been  parted  in  the  middle,  or  on  the  side;  in  people 
who  have  learned  to  use  ungrammatical  forms  in 
youth;  in  children  who  have  not  been  taught  to  con- 
trol their  tempers,  and  in  children  who  have  been 
taught  to  do  so.  It  is  seen  in  the  story-teller,  in  the 
man  who  exaggerates,  in  habits  of  carelessness  and 
habits  of  accuracy.  Whatever  an  individual  does, 
constitutes  in  his  organism  an  added  excuse  for  doing 
it  again. 


Our  Inheritance  17 

It  can  be  seen,  therefore,  how  important  it  is  that 
these  general  instincts  of  the  child  should  be  set  going 
in  the  right  way  and  not  be  allowed  to  shoot  off  in  ways 
which  will  prevent  his  development,  and  which  may 
result  in  ruin.  Because  of  improper  associates  (per- 
sonal stimuli)  during  the  years  of  puberty  and  adoles- 
cence, which  mark  the  rise  and  development  of  a  racial 
instinct,  many  a  youth  has  apparently  been  rendered 
incapable  of  ever  having  a  right  mental  reaction 
when  thinking  of  the  opposite  sex.  So  it  is  with  vari- 
ous instincts  during  our  entire  Hves.  The  most  im- 
portant thing  that  can  happen  to  a  child  is  that  he 
shall  have  the  wisest  possible  guidance  during  these 
early  years,  when  he  is  making  his  first  reactions  to 
this  great  world  of  stimuU  —  physical,  personal,  social, 
and  religious  —  in  which  he  is  practically  swamped. 
New  light  is  thus  shed  upon  the  importance  and  sanc- 
tity of  parenthood,  and  new  emphasis  is  placed  upon 
the  responsibihty,  the  opportunity,  and  the  dignity  of 
the  teaching  profession.  Nothing  will  be  more  con- 
ducive to  thoughtfulness  on  the  part  of  the  teacher 
in  everything  he  does  than  the  realization  of  the  fact 
that  he  is  not  teaching  for  a  day  only;  that  the  child's 
behavior,  his  life  of  activity,  his  responses  to  his  en- 
vironment to-day,  are  blazing  the  way  in  which  he  will 


1 8  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

in  all  probability  go  to-morrow,  and  all  the  days  that 
follow  to-morrow. 

The  great  length  of  the  period  of  infancy  in  the 
human  child  is  significant.  Contrary  to  the  popular 
thought  that  man  is  the  least  instinctive  of  animals, 
he  is  perhaps  at  birth  the  most  instinctive.  He  is  not 
born  with  so  many  ready-made  specific  instincts  as 
are  the  lower  animals,  and  herein  lies  his  hope  of  prog- 
ress. Within  a  few  months  after  birth  the  puppy 
and  the  kitten  are  performing  practically  all  the  dog 
and  cat  activities,  and  are  performing  them  as  well  as 
they  ever  will.  They  have  in  a  very  true  sense  in- 
herited these  definite  modes  of  activity  and  they  can 
no  more  avoid  them  or  outhve  them  than  they  can 
their  color.  Their  period  of  infancy  is  very  short,  for 
they  have  little  to  learn.  With  the  human  child  this 
is  not  true.  Twenty-five  or  thirty  years  are  required 
to  bring  him  to  adulthood.  At  birth  or  soon  afterward 
he  is  not  able  to  perform  numerous  activities  with  pre- 
cision and  accuracy  as  are  the  lower  animals.  For 
years  he  is  incapable  of  doing  anything  with  precision 
and  accuracy.  But  he  starts  with  an  organism  and 
with  broad  general  instincts  that  are  capable,  by  proper 
training  during  his  long  childhood,  of  being  developed 
into  specific  skills  heretofore  unrealized  in  the  race. 


Our  Inheritance  19 

The  human  nervous  system  is  no  exception  to  the  ten- 
dency of  all  things  to  act  again  as  they  have  previously 
acted.  As  a  consequence  most  of  the  adult  human 
activities  are  the  results  of  habits  which  have  been 
formed  in  the  hfe  of  the  individual.  The  general  in- 
stinct with  which  the  child  started,  in  manifesting 
itself  in  certain  definite  ways  at  the  beginning,  instead 
of  certain  other  definite  ways  which  were  just  as  pos- 
sible and  just  as  appropriate,  has  developed  into 
specific  habits,  and  has  done  so  by  losing  its  general 
possibihties.  This  can  be  illustrated  if  we  liken  the 
possibihties  of  the  young  nervous  system  and  its  gen- 
eral instinctive  tendencies  to  the  possibihties  of  new 
milk.  The  new  milk  has  butter  possibihties,  cheese 
possibihties,  and  doubtless  many  others.  Now  if  it 
goes  through  the  processes  which  result  in  butter,  it 
loses  its  cheese  possibihties.  The  price  it  pays  for 
being  butter  is  that  it  shall  never  be  cheese.  So  it  is 
in  the  development  upon  the  basic  human  instincts: 
the  possibihties  at  the  beginning  are  numerous  and 
untold,  and  in  the  adult  they  are  less  numerous  and 
more  specific.  As  a  rule  the  price  we  pay  for  certain 
skills  is  our  inabihty  to  be  skillful  in  certain  other  Hnes. 
The  Jack- of- aU- trades  can  only  be  such  at  the  price 
of  being  master  of  none,  and  the  master  of  one  trade 


ao  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

can  be  such  only  by  surrendering  the  original  possi- 
bility of  shallow  versatility. 

It  seems  to  be  pretty  generally  recognized  that  the 
child  inherits  the  religious  instinct,  but  he  does  not  in- 
herit the  Methodist  or  the  Presbyterian  instinct.  He 
does  not  inherit  the  Protestant  or  Cathohc  instinct. 
In  all  probability  he  does  not  inherit  the  Christian  or 
Mohammedan  instinct.  But  he  is  by  nature  rehgious, 
and  which  way  he  shall  go  will  be  determined  more 
by  his  early  personal  stimulations  than  by  all  other 
things  combined.  The  importance  of  the  character 
of  the  child's  associates  cannot  from  this  standpoint 
be  overestimated.  It  is  not  at  all  strange,  psycho- 
logically, that  the  children  of  Methodists  should  be 
Methodists ;  the  children  of  CathoHcs,  Catholics ; 
and  the  children  of  Mohammedans,  Mohammedans. 
The  strange  thing  would  be  if  they  were  not.  We 
find  exactly  what,  from  the  standpoint  of  the  psycholo- 
gist, we  should  expect  to  find.  The  child  inherits 
the  potentialities  for  a  social  Hfe,  —  a  Hfe  of  organiza- 
tion, —  but  he  does  not  inherit  the  specific  tendency  to 
organize  as  the  Democrats  do  or  as  the  Republicans 
do.  But  here  again  we  see  what  we  should  expect, 
that  the  children  of  Democrats  are  Democrats,  and 
the  children  of  Republicans  are  Republicans.    Any 


Our  Inheritance  21 

violation  of  this  rule  is  exceptional.  The  effect  of 
personal  stimuli,  from  childhood  up,  is  here  plainly 
seen. 

The  child  doubtless  has  the  language  instinct,  but 
in  all  probability  he  does  not  start  with  the  English 
language  instinct,  or  the  German  language  instinct,  or 
the  French  or  Spanish  language  instinct.  In  which 
direction  this  language  instinct  shall  manifest  itself 
depends  upon  the  specific  language  stimuU  which 
come  to  the  child.  The  conditions  for  speaking  the 
Spanish  language  fluently  are  that  the  child  shall  be 
continually  surrounded  by  people  who  speak  it  flu- 
ently, and  the  price  he  pays  for  such  attainment 
through  such  personal  stimuH  (social  environment)  is  his 
inability  to  speak  many  or  any  of  the  other  languages 
so  well.  Or,  again,  the  child  is  not  born  with  a  good 
instinct  for  grammar  or  a  poor  instinct  for  grammar. 
Whether  he  shall  finally  say  "had  gone"  and  ''between 
you  and  me,"  or  shall  be  doomed  to  say  "had  went" 
and  "between  you  and  I,"  depends  primarily  and  al- 
most entirely  upon  the  language  stimuH  to  which  he 
is  subjected  during  his  first  years.  The  child  is  born 
with  the  instinct  to  feed  himself,  but  he  is  born  with 
neither  good  table  manners  nor  bad  table  manners. 
These  are  matters  of  acquisition  that  are,    however, 


22  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teachi 


ng 


rooted  in  the  general  instinct,  and  result  from  it  under 
specific  stimuli. 

The  teacher  is  almost  sure  to  underestimate  his 
magnificent  chance  and  his  tremendous  responsibiHty, 
if  he  does  not  reahze  that  the  child's  inheritance  is  not 
special,  and  that  his  ready-made  reactions  are  com- 
paratively few;  that  upon  him  devolves  the  task  of 
providing  for  the  child  stimuli  whose  appropriate  re- 
actions will  make  for  strength  and  not  for  weakness. 
The  wise  teacher  will  see  that  it  is  the  sum  total  of 
such  reactions  which  constitutes  behavior,  and  that  be- 
havior is  but  the  expressed  side  of  character.  He  will 
then  be  able  to  evaluate  the  different  school  branches 
and  see  the  significance  of  each.  He  will  no  more 
look  upon  the  school  course  as  a  thing  to  be  accom- 
pHshed  by  the  students,  but  rather  as  a  vast  variety  of 
opportunities  to  stimulate  the  students  to  activity. 
This  conception  of  the  child's  inheritance  will  do  more 
to  enable  the  thoughtful  teacher  to  place  him  where  he 
belongs,  at  the  center  of  the  entire  school  process,  than 
will  any  other  psychologic  conception.  It  will  enable 
him  to  see  that  although  through  blood  relationship 
it  is  given  to  the  parent  to  determine  what  shall  be  the 
range  of  the  child's  possibiHties,  nevertheless  through 
the  teacher  as  the  conscious  agent  of  the  child's  most 


Our  Inheritance  23 

thoughtful  stimulations  are  his  definite,  specific  attain- 
ments realized.  A  thousand  ways  the  child  may  go ;  it 
is  the  teacher's  pleasant,  though  often  difficult,  task  to 
determine  that  he  shall  go  in  those  ways  only  which 
lead  to  life. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE  PHYSICAL  BASIS  OF  MENTAL  LIFE 

All  mental  life,  so  far  as  we  are  able  to  observe,  is 
directly  associated  with  some  sort  of  physical  organism, 
and,  so  far  as  we  know,  this  is  always  an  animal  organ- 
ism. There  may  be  a  psychology  of  plants,  but  the 
fact  has  not  been  established.  It  is  a  generally  ac- 
cepted fact  that  consciousness  is  more  closely  associated 
with  and  directly  dependent  upon  the  nervous  system 
than  upon  any  other  part  of  the  organism.  This 
gives  us  a  basis  for  the  study  of  consciousness  in  two 
directions:  (i)  from  the  standpoint  of  neurology  — 
thus  ascertaining,  as  well  as  may  be,  the  exact  relation 
between  neural  development,  neural  complexity  and 
disease,  and  the  mental  life,  normal  and  abnormal; 
and  (2)  from  the  standpoint  of  expression.  We  know 
the  mental  life  of  another  only  as  we  are  able,  through 
introspection  and  observation  of  his  expressive  move- 
ments and  language,  to  infer  what  his  conscious  states 
are.  But  his  expressive  Hfe  is  subject  to  nervous 
control.     The  nervous  system  then  serves  the  double 

24 


The  Physical   Basis  of  Mental  Life 

purpose  of  being  the  basis  of  all  psychical  Hfe  and  the 
basis  for  the  expression  of  it.  It  is  evident,  therefore, 
how  important  must  be  a  general  notion  of  the  nervous 
system  even  to  the  amateur  psychologist. 

The  nervous  system  is  composed  of  a  vast  number 
of  neurons,  so  called,  each  of  which  consists  of  a  nerve 
cell  and  a  nerve  fiber  or  process.  The  nerve  fibers 
extend  into  all  parts  of  the  body,  dividing  and  subdivid- 
ing into  the  smallest  conceivable  fibrils  in  the  peripheral 
organs.  It  is  the  opinion  of  the  most  careful  and 
thoroughgoing  students  of  neurology  that  these  neurons, 
even  in  the  periphery,  never  directly  connect  one  with 
another;  however  close  they  may  come,  and  however 
minutely  they  may  intertwine,  they  never,  so  to  speak, 
grow  into  each  other.  The  transfer  of  a  nervous 
impulse  from  one  neuron  into  another  is  accomphshed 
by  a  method  known  in  physical  science  as  induction. 
The  constitution  of  the  nervous  system  as  to  matter 
and  structure  is  such  as  to  permit  of  three  possibiHties 
for  nervous  impulses:  (i)  Many  nervous  impulses 
may  be  propagated  at  the  same  time.  (2)  A  ner- 
vous impulse  may  be  modified  by  the  induction  of 
another  impulse  from  a  neighboring  neuron.  (3)  A 
nervous  impulse  transferred  to  another  neuron  may  be 
modified  by  an  impulse  already  there. 


26  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

The  question  of  the  exact  relationship  between 
neurology  and  psychology,  between  matter  and  mind, 
is  a  much  mooted  one,  and  one  which  may  never  be 
fully  answered  by  science.  The  discussion  of  Mercier 
in  his  book  on  "Sanity  and  Insanity"  will  help  the 
reader  into  the  latest  and  most  plausible  theory  on 
the  subject :  — 

"The  relation  of  mind  to  nervous  processes  is  very  pecul- 
iar, and  since  it  is,  in  fact,  very  different  from  that  which 
is  vaguely  current,  and,  I  will  not  say  accepted,  but  assumed, 
by  many  who  have  not  studied  the  matter,  it  will  be  neces- 
sary for  the  reader  to  rid  himself  as  far  as  possible  of  the 
preconceived  notions  of  the  matter,  and  to  begin  its  con- 
sideration afresh  with  a  perfectly  open  mind.  In  the  first 
place,  he  must  discard  altogether  the  notion  that  mind  can 
work  upon,  or  influence,  or  produce  changes  in  the  nervous 
system,  or  in  matter  of  any  kind,  however  arranged;  and, 
in  the  second  place,  he  must  rid  himself  of  the  idea  that 
any  nervous  process,  or  any  movement,  or  rearrangement 
of  material  particles,  can  ever,  under  any  circumstances, 
be  transferred  into  mental  phenomena  —  into  an  idea, 
or  a  feeling,  or  any  other  state  or  condition  of  mind. 

"The  true  connection  between  nervous  and  mental 
phenomena  is  believed  to  be  this  :  that  when,  in  the  course 
of  its  circuit  from  the  organs  of  sense  to  the  muscles,  a  nerve 
current  reaches  the  highest  centers,  and  sets  them  in  action, 
then  this  activity  of  the  highest  nervous  centers  is  attended, 


The  Physical  Basis  of  Mental   Life        27 

we  cannot  say  why  or  how,  by  mental  states.  Every  altera- 
tion of  nervous  tension  in  these  upper  centers  is  attended 
by  a  variation  in  the  mental  processes.  Every  fluctuation 
of  nerve  currents,  in  this  way  and  in  that,  has  an  accom- 
paniment in  a  variation  of  mental  states  strictly  in  corre- 
spondence with  it.  The  one  set  of  changes  takes  place  in 
the  nervous  system,  and  is  an  affair  of  molecules,  and 
discharges,  and  nerve  currents.  The  other  set  of  changes 
takes  place  in  the  mind,  and  is  an  affair  of  ideas,  and  feel- 
ings, and  volitions.  The  one  set  of  changes  accompanies 
the  other  set  of  changes  invariably  and  instantly,  just  as 
the  movements  of  the  shadow  accompany  the  movements 
of  the  man.  But  the  mental  changes  can  no  more  influence 
or  alter  the  nervous  changes  than  the  shadow  can  move 
the  man;  and  the  nervous  system,  or  the  body  which  con- 
tains it,  can  no  more  act  independently  and  directly  upon 
the  mind  than  the  man  can  pick  up  his  shadow  and  throw 
it  away.  The  influence  of  the  body  is  limited  to  the  changes 
that  it  brings  about  in  the  working  of  the  higher  nervous 
centers;  and  when  such  a  change  is  produced,  change  of 
mental  processes  takes  place  simultaneously,  just  as  a 
change  of  the  attitude  of  the  body  is  accompanied  by  a 
change  of  shape  of  the  shadow.  But  to  suppose  that  an 
action  on  the  body  can  influence  the  mind  without  changing 
the  nervous  centers  is  like  supposing  that  a  man  can  alter 
the  shape  of  his  shadow  without  moving  his  body." 

The  theory  of  the  parallelism  of  neural  and  psychical 
states  seems  the  most  probable  one,  and  the  one  fraught 


28  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

with  fewest  dangers  of  rank  misconception.  We  know, 
for  example,  that  as  the  organisms  of  conscious  beings 
vary  in  complexity,  so  the  accompanying  conscious- 
nesses vary.  We  know  that  the  more  complex  and 
highly  developed  nervous  system  is  found  in  conjunc- 
tion with  the  higher  and  more  complex  forms  of  con- 
sciousness, —  thought,  feehngs,  and  voHtions,  —  and 
that  the  simple,  undifferentiated,  unicellular  (so  to 
speak)  nervous  system  is  paralleled  by  the  simplest 
and  most  rudimentary  form  of  consciousness.  In 
man  we  find  the  parallelism  between  the  most  com- 
plex, highly  developed  nervous  system  on  the  one 
hand,  and  on  the  other  hand,  psychical  activities 
unthought  of  in  connection  with  any  of  the  lower 
forms.  But  so  far  as  is  known  to  science,  conscious- 
ness does  not  accompany  changes  or  disturbances  in 
all  parts  of  the  nervous  system  —  not  even  all  those 
in  the  higher  nervous  centers.  What  happens  below 
the  threshold,  no  one  is  able  to  say.  I  have  no  quar- 
rel with  him  who  says,  *'A  rudimentary  conscious- 
ness, a  consciousness  in  potentia,  accompanies  all 
neural  activities."  Who  affirms  and  who  denies  are 
equally  ignorant  of  the  facts.  But  for  all  scientific 
and  practical  purposes  we  are  authorized  by  the 
facts  to  say  that   disturbances  in  the  higher  brain, 


The  Physical  Basis  of  Mental  Life        29 

the  cortex,  alone  are  accompanied  by  consciousness, 
and,  furthermore,  only  those  disturbances  which  are 
sufficiently  severe  and  novel  have  such  accompani- 
ments. 

Doubtless  every  hour  thousands  of  little  vegetative 
and  physiological  changes  are  taking  place  in  the  cor- 
tex, whose  mental  counterpart,  if  there  be  any,  never 
rises  into  the  realm  of  consciousness.  The  disturbance 
must  be  sufficiently  severe,  the  body  casting  the  shadow 
—  to  revert  to  the  figure  of  Mercier  —  must  be  suffi- 
ciently opaque,  to  cast  a  shadow.  The  disturbance 
must  also  be  comparatively  novel.  Disturbances 
which  were  at  some  former  time  accompanied  by  the 
closest  kind  of  conscious  attention  and  adjustment 
of  movements  are  no  longer  thus  paralleled  by  con- 
sciousness. The  lock  has  worn  smooth  and  no  longer 
catches  or  screeches.  A  complex  activity  once  con- 
trolled by  the  highest  conscious  centers  is,  through 
the  force  of  habit,  no  longer  so  controlled.  Con- 
sciousness has  been  lost  with  novelty. 

The  close  relationship  existing  between  our  neural 
and  our  psychical  Hves  is  nowhere  more  clearly  seen 
than  in  the  field  of  nervous  diseases  and  mental  ineffi- 
ciency. The  shuffling  gait,  the  hanging,  character- 
less hands,  the  open,  uncontrolled  mouth  of  the  idiot 


30  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

or  the   insane   person,   are   typical  signs   of  nervous 
disorder  and  mental  shortness. 

Quoting  again  from  Mercier,  to  emphasize  this 
thought  from  the  standpoint  of  an  expert  in  nervous 
and  mental  disorders:  — 

*'It  is  in  fact  impossible  for  mind  alone  to  be  disordered. 
For  feelings  and  thoughts,  mental  states  and  mental  pro- 
cesses, are  but  the  shadows  or  accompaniments  of  nervous 
states  and  nervous  processes;  and  since  no  mental  change 
can  occur  save  as  the  shadow  or  accompaniment  of  a  ner- 
vous change,  so,  a  fortiori,  no  mental  disorder  can  occur  ex- 
cept as  the  shadow  or  accompaniment  of  a  nervous  disorder. 
Whenever,  therefore,  there  is  disorder  of  mind,  there  must 
be  disorder  of  nervous  processes  —  of  those  processes  which 
have  a  mental  accompaniment  —  that  is  to  say,  of  those 
which  are  highest.  But  the  highest  nervous  processes  are 
those  which  regulate  the  movements  of  the  body  with  re- 
spect to  the  circumstances  in  the  outside  world  —  are,  in 
fact,  those  which  actuate  conduct.  Hence,  when  these  high- 
est nervous  processes  are  disordered,  not  only  must  mind  be 
disordered,  but  conduct  must  be  disordered  also.  While, 
therefore,  we  find  from  observation  that  as  a  matter  of 
fact  disorder  of  mind  is  not  the  only  deviation  from  the 
normal  in  insanity,  on  the  other  hand  we  find  from  the 
principles  already  laid  down  that  mental  disorder  cannot 
exist  alone,  but  must  always  be  accompanied  by  disorder 
of  nervous  processes  and  disorder  of  conduct." 


The  Physical   Basis  of  Mental   Life        31 

Enough  has  been  said  to  show  how  truly  and  in 
what  sense  there  is  a  physical  basis  of  mental  life, 
psychologically  speaking.  Once  more  the  practical 
significance  of  this  fact  is  what  is  of  chief  concern  to 
the  teacher  and  the  parent.  Such  defects  as  stam- 
mering and  stuttering  are  due  to  nervous  affection, 
and  have  been  entirely  overcome  by  appropriate 
motor  training.  Nervousness  itself  may  be  due  to 
some  local  defect,  such  as  weak  eyes  or  eyes  out  of 
focus.  In  such  cases  a  correction  of  the  local  defect 
by  glasses  or  other  sane  treatment  is  the  only  cor- 
rective needed  for  the  general  defect.  General  ner- 
vousness, inability  to  control  one's  self  in  any  way, 
bodily  or  mentally,  is  a  condition  to  be  avoided  or 
corrected,  regardless  of  every  other  consideration. 
It  will  be  a  sign  of  better  days  when  parents  of  ner- 
vous children  are  wise  enough  to  take  them  from 
school  if  need  be,  and  let  them  romp  and  play  in  the 
sunshine  and  fresh  air,  and  rest  quietly  alone  and 
away  from  all  causes  of  excitement  and  self-conscious- 
ness ;  and  when  teachers  are  wise  enough  to  act  in 
loco  parentis,  and  will  violate  the  formal  programme 
of  the  school  enough  to  lighten  the  burdens  of  these 
children,  and  give  them  more  time  for  rest  and  out- 
of-door  exercise.     Better  that  the  child  should  remain 


32  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

in  sublime  ignorance  of  many  things  which  the  schools 
teach  than  that  he  should  graduate  from  them  a  ner- 
vous wreck;  and  this  comes  home  to  us  with  multi- 
plied significance  when  we  reahze  that  such  nervous 
undoing  may,  and  in  many  cases  does,  result  in  the 
complete  mental  undoing  of  the  child. 


CHAPTER  IV 

A     CYCLE  :      STIMULATION,     INTERPRETATION,     EXPRES- 
SION 

An  individual  is  capable  of  three  things,  —  he  can 
be  impressed;  he  can  reflect,  reorganize,  reconstruct; 
and  he  can  express.  The  mental  cycle  is  sensation, 
organization,  and  expression.  This  *' cycle,"  without 
setting  hard  and  fast  lines,  serves  to  put  in  the  brief- 
est and  plainest  way  the  relationship  of  certain  psy- 
chical factors. 

The  raw  material  of  all  intelligence  comes  to  the 
individual  as  sensations  resulting  from  outer  stimula- 
tions.    It  is  a  generally  admitted  fact  that  if  a  person   , 
were  denied  the  use  of  all  the  senses  from  birth  on,    ' 
he  would  know  absolutely  nothing.     The  senses  are 
the   avenues   through   which   all   the   stimulations   to  / 
intellectual    life    come.     The    importance,    therefore, 
of  senses  which  function  fully  and  normally  cannot  be 
overestimated  even  from  the  psychological  and  peda- 
gogical standpoints;   and  one  of  the  large  tasks  of  the 
teacher  is  to  teach  those  who  have  eyes  to  see,  and 

33 


34  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

those  who  have  ears  to  hear.  The  beauties  of  nature 
are  not  yet  seen  by  the  children,  and  the  unheard 
songs  are  innumerable.  The  great  advantage  to 
come  from  nature  study  in  the  schools  is  that  the  chil- 
dren may  see  the  world  and  hear  it  as  it  has  never 
been  seen  and  heard  by  the  people  before. 

Impression  is  the  first  consideration  in  child  de- 
velopment, —  this  to  be  followed  by  reflection,  organi- 
zation, and  finally  expression.  We  should  seek  not  a 
formal,  artificial,  superficial  impression,  but  a  natural 
impression  through  the  child's  senses  by  the  world 
of  nature  and  art  about  him.  The  bane  of  the  schooli 
has  been  artificial  impression,  to  the  practical  exclu-| 
sion  of  everything  else. 

Teachers  direct  too  much;  they  explain  too  much; 
they,  themselves,  recite  too  much ;  they  talk  too  much. 
There  is  far  too  much  of  this  kind  of  impression;  yet 
the  children  do  not  see,  neither  do  they  hear.  The 
consistent,  quiet  though  forceful  teacher  who  has 
grace  enough  to  keep  himself  in  the  background, 
through  his  reaHzation  that  the  school  is  the  child's 
great  chance,  will  find  opportunity  on  every  hand  to 
bring  the  children  face  to  face  with  real  things,  to 
stimulate  them  to  heretofore  unthought-of  activities, 
and  so  cultivate  in  them  not  only  an  interest  in  nature 


Stimulation,  Interpretation,  Expression     35 

and  art,  but  a  capacity  to  see  and  hear  beauty  of  all 
kinds,  as  they  have  never  been  able  to  do  before.  All 
school  work  lends  itself  more  or  less  to  this  kind  of 
training,  but  science  proper,  manual  training,  nature 
study  and  the  fine  arts,  including  music,  are  especially 
adapted  to  this  end. 

Before  these  sensations  which  the  child  gets  from 
outer  stimulations  can  serve  him  to  any  purpose,  they 
must  be  interpreted,  they  must  be  shot  through  and 
through  with  meaning,  they  must  have  become  signifi- 
cant. And  before  impressions,  which  are  the  direct 
resultants  of  significant  sensations,  or  ideas,  which  are 
the  indirect  resultants  of  such  sensations,  can  serve 
any  purpose  in  our  mental  economy,  it  is  necessary 
that  they  should  be  related;  that  all  such  compara- 
tively small  units  of  our  consciousness  should  be  or- 
ganized in  one  fashion  or  another.  This  is  the  second 
step  in  the  mental  cycle  as  now  considered.  All  the 
stimulations  in  the  universe  will  fail  to  capitalize  a. 
person  in  the  mental  world  unless  he  reflects,  imagines, 
judges,  thinks;  unless  he  organizes  himself  mentally. 
Three  conditions  are  primarily  essential  to  the  suc- 
cessful performance  by  the  pupil  of  this  process: 
(i)  appropriate  stimuU,  including  direction  from  the 
teacher ;   (2)  time ;   (3)   freedom  from   counter-stimu- 


7 


36  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

lations.  The  first  condition  may  be  dismissed,  being 
that  already  discussed  as  the  first  step  of  the  cycle. 

The  element  of  time  is  of  vastly  more  importance 
than  is  generally  recognized.  Observation  and  ex- 
periment both  show  that  time  is  not  only  an  important, 
but  strictly  an  essential  element  in  mental  organiza- 
tion of  all  kinds. 

The  bright  child  who  glances  at  a  lesson  just  before 
the  class  is  called,  and  gathers  up  enough  points  to 
appear  well  in  recitation,  has  in  no  sense  mastered 
the  things  so  well  as  the  plodder  who  has  spent  hours 
in  preparation,  and  who  in  all  probabihty  shows  to 
no  better  advantage  in  the  recitation  than  the  child 
with  a  moment's  preparation.  As  a  rule,  at  the  end 
of  a  day  or  a  week  the  bright  child  is  not  able  to  recall 
a  single  item  of  the  lesson,  whereas  the  plodder  who 
accompHshed  comparatively  Httle,  and  this  at  great 
expense  of  energy  and  time,  retains  with  remarkable 
accuracy  what  cost  him  so  much.  He  thought  it  over 
and  had  time  to  organize  it,  whereas  the  bright  child, 
to  use  a  figure,  had  never  more  than  come  tangent  to  it. 

A  bicyclist,  who  was  found  lying  unconscious  at  the 
foot  of  a  long  hill,  was  not  able  to  recall  afterward 
anything  which  had  happened  a  half  mile  before  he 
came  to  the  hill,  while  he  remembered  distinctly  his 


Stimulation,  Interpretation,  Expression     37 

experiences  before  this  time.  The  stimuli  which 
came  to  him  through  ears,  eyes,  and  skin  had  not 
had  time  to  make  their  mark  —  had  not  had  time  to 
become  organized. 

A  friend  of  mine  living  on  a  ranch  had  an  excep- 
tionally vicious  horse  which  had  to  be  handled  with 
the  greatest  care.  One  day  while  reading  in  the 
house  it  occurred  to  him  that  this  vicious  animal 
should  be  taken  from  the  stable  and  "staked  out" 
in  the  pasture.  An  hour  later  when  the  partner  on 
the  ranch  came  home,  he  found  the  horse  running 
among  the  other  horses  dragging  the  long  rope  at- 
tached to  the  halter.  Upon  investigating,  he  found 
my  friend  in  the  pasture  unconscious  from  a  kick  on 
the  head.  After  he  had  regained  consciousness,  he 
was  unable  to  recall  anything  which  had  happened 
from  the  time  he  decided  to  put  up  his  book  and 
"stake  out"  the  horse.  He  did  not  remember  how 
he  went  to  the  stable;  whether  he  approached  the 
horse  the  accustomed  way  or  an  exceptional  way; 
what  happened  on  the  way  to  the  pasture,  or  how  he 
lost  control  of  the  horse. 

Advocates  of  short  cuts  in  education  need  to  bear 
in  mind  the  point  brought  out  by  these  examples. 
Tin^e  is  necessary  for  the  stimuli  to  produce  an  effect. 


38  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

Time  is  an  essential  to  all  training.  Because  a  child 
is  able  to  accomplish  the  four  years'  high  school  course 
in  two  years,  it  does  not  follow  that  he  will  derive  the 
greatest  benefit  by  doing  it  in  that  time,  much  less 
does  it  follow  that  the  high  school  course  should  be 
shortened.  There  is  no  sympathy  between  modern 
psychology  and  the  recent  tendency  to  shorten  and 
telescope  courses  of  training.  We  need  to  bear  in 
mind  at  all  times  that  the  purpose  of  the  school  is  to 
exhaust  the  possibilities  of  the  pupil  and  not  the  thing 
taught.  The  purpose  of  the  college  is  to  give  an  op- 
portunity for  four  years'  training.  The  more  capable 
will  get  more;  the  less  capable,  less. 

Two  common  customs  of  teachers  in  the  school- 
'  room  run  counter  to  this  theory  of  time  as  an  essential 
element  in  the  child's  thought  processes,  and  his  de- 
velopment in  general.  One  is  the  "rapid  fire"  method 
of  conducting  recitations;  the  other  is  mental  dis- 
traction induced  by  the  introduction  of  irrelevant 
matter  in  the  form  of  stories  and  long-drawn  illustra- 
tions, or  by  loose,  scattering  teaching. 

The  ** rapid  fire"  teachers,  and  their  name  is  legion, 
seem  to  be  cramped  on  the  notion  that  the  end  of  all 
school  work  is  to  get  definite,  concrete  answers  to 
definite  questions.    If  we  should  judge  from  the  way 


Stimulation,  Interpretation,  Expression     39 

they  eagerly  skip  from  one  child  to  another  in  the 
search  for  the  answer,  without  giving  any  one  of  them 
time  to  think  at  all,  we  might  decide  that  it  has  never 
occurred  to  most  teachers  that  the  purpose  of  the 
school  is  to  train  children,  and  we  might  think  that 
the  excuse  for  the  enormous  outlay  of  money  in  a/ 
school  system  is  the  answering  of  questions.  Teachers 
should  realize  that  it  isn't  criminal  to  let  a  child  think. 
They  should  recognize  that  not  one  little  question  in 
ten  thousand  which  comes  up  in  the  schoolroom  will 
ever  come  up  again;  that  the  little  question  in  itself 
and  the  little  answer  in  itself  have  absolutely  no  value. 
They  should  also  realize  that  there  will  hardly  be  an 
hour  in  hfe  when  some  new  problem,  unheard  of  and 
unsolved,  will  not  confront  the  child,  and  he  will  need 
to  be  able  to  think.  They  need  to  realize  that  one 
large  purpose  of  the  school  is  to  give  the  child  an  oppor- 
tunity to  learn  how  to  think,  and  that  the  only  way  to 
do  this  is  to  set  him  to  work  on  great  varieties  of  tasks, 
such  as  come  up  in  all  the  subjects  taught,  and  give 
him  time  to  accomplish  them.  At  the  end  of  all  these 
tasks  the  child  will  have  accomplished  himself,  he  will 
have  turned  out  the  big  answer  —  a  person  who  can 
think,  and  not  a  multitude  of  little  insignificant,  un- 
related, vocal  or  written  answers.     Many  recitations, 


40  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

a  majority  of  them,  are  not  productive  of  a  single, 
well-defined  thought  by  a  single  pupil  in  the  class. 
They  are  little  more  than  rush-and-grab-hold  guesses, 
with  the  result  that  we  turn  out  of  the  schools,  year  by 
year,  large  numbers  of  rush-and-grab-hold  guessers. 

The  second  common  error,  not  to  say  crime,  that  is 
hourly  committed  in  the  name  of  a  recitation,  is  the 
error  of  "side  tracking"  on  a  story,  or  of  needless 
and  far-fetched  illustrations.  A  class  coming  from  the 
physical  laboratory  to  the  recitation  in  history  does 
not  find  it  easy  to  transfer  thoughts  and  attention  from 
the  one  to  the  other.  The  pupils  are  pulling  away 
from  the  physics  and  pulling  toward  history.  They 
are,  so  to  speak,  tied  up  to  the  old  post  and  find  diffi- 
culty in  getting  away  at  once.  The  teacher  sees  this 
and  doubles  their  difficulty.  He  says:  *T  see  that 
you  can't  get  your  minds  on  history;  let  me  tell  you 
a  story,"  and  away  he  goes  on  something,  related 
neither  to  physics  nor  to  history.  The  class  is  now 
tied  up  to  two  posts,  physics  and  the  story,  and  it  is 
practically  impossible  to  secure  any  history  thinking. 
Any  subject  that  needs  to  be  taught  in  this  way  should 
be  removed  from  the  curriculum ;  any  good  teacher 
who  needs  to  teach  a  particular  subject  in  this  way 
shpuld  be  removed  to  another  part  of  the  curriculum; 


Stimulation,   Interpretation,  Expression     41 

and   any   teacher   who   teaches   this   way   in   general 
should  be  removed  from  the  profession. 

This  illustration  appHes  as  well  to  the  third  point  of 
counter-stimulations.  Time  will  accomplish  little  for 
the  child  if  he  is  subjected  to  numerous  and  strong 
counter-stimulations.  Herein  lies  the  excuse  for  many 
requirements  upon  the  school,  such  as  regularity, 
punctuaHty,  and  quiet.  Irregularity,  tardiness,  and 
noise  not  only  affect  the  person  directly  responsible 
for  them,  but  disturb  the  school  by  distracting  from 
the  work  in  hand.  The  teacher  should  be  careful 
himself  not  to  serve  as  a  counter-stimulant.  The 
high  school  teacher  who  changed  gowns  practically 
every  afternoon  had  allowed  a  professional  virtue 
(that  of  neatness  and  attractiveness)  to  develop  Into  a 
professional  vice.  Her  students  were  unable  to  think 
history  ;  they  were  thinking  about  the  teacher's  many 
pretty  clothes.  It  is  much  worse  where  the  counter-^\ 
stimulant  is  the  teacher's  high,  harsh  voice  continually y 
talking  and  scolding.  ' 

And  then  comes  expression.  It  has  been  said  that  if 
all  the  class  has  thought  the  work  through,  it  makes 
but  little  diflFerence  which  member  of  the  class  recites ; 
this  of  course  is  not  true.  Ideas  tend  to  express 
themselves.    This  has  come  to  be  a  familiar  tenet  of 


42  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

psychology.  It  is  true  and  fundamental.  There  is, 
however,  another  psychologic  fact  just  as  fundamental 
and  true,  but  not  so  famiHar,  viz.  that  our  expression 
of  an  idea  tends  to  define  and  clarify  it,  and  at  the 
same  time  determines  more  or  less  the  direction  and 
strength  of  the  ideas  that  follow.  A  fact  never  to  be 
forgotten  is  that  the  life  to  be  expressed  is  affected 
by  the  expression  just  as  truly  as  the  expression  is 
affected  by  the  Hfe  to  be  expressed.  Students  should 
be  encouraged  to  express  themselves.  The  oppor- 
tunities for  expression  in  the  schoolroom  should  be 
numerous  and  varied  —  opportunities  for  oral  expres- 
sion, written  expression,  drawing,  music,  manual 
training  of  all  kinds.  Three  opportunities,  then,  the 
school  should  afford  the  student  —  an  opportunity 
for  varied  stimulations  to  useful  mental  activities; 
an  opportunity  for  mental  digestion,  mental  assimila- 
tion ;  and  greater  opportunities  than  have  heretofore 
been  given  him  for  fullness  and  richness  of  expression. 


CHAPTER  V 

HABIT 

The  word  habit  is  worn  threadbare.  It  is  a 
much-used  term  in  ethics,  psychology,  religion,  and 
common  talk.  Many  new  and  true  things  have  been 
said  about  it  in  these  last  days,  and  many  trite  and 
commonplace,  albeit  more  or  less  true  things  have 
been  said  about  it  for  no  one  knows  how  long.  All 
this  in  a  way  argues  the  importance  of  the  subject 
and  the  unique  and  central  place  it  occupies  in  the 
minds  of  the  people,  although  its  scientific  significance 
is  not  generally  understood. 

Habit  makes  for  conservatism  ;  it  makes  for  stability 
in  the  individual  or  social  group,  in  the  school  or  in 
the  state.  The  new  pair  of  shoes  in  the  store  is  any- 
body's or  nobody's.  It  is  equally  well  suited  to  any 
one  of  a  thousand  men.  Not  so  after  the  shoes  have 
been  worn  by  one  of  the  thousand  for  a  week,;  then 
they  have  become  that  man's  shoes,  and  it  is  prac- 
tically impossible  for  them  to  be  properly  adjusted 
to  any  one  else.    They  have  taken  an  individual  set 

43 


44  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

—  they  have  taken  on  character ;  they  have  chosen, 
so  to  speak,  to  be  such  and  such  shoes,  and  the  other 
nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine  original  possibilities 
have  been  lost  —  lost  in  the  reaHzation  of  this  one 
actuahty,  in  the  formation  of  this  one  definite,  specific 
character.  So  it  is  with  a  human  being  or  a  social 
group,  however  large ;  and  well  it  is  that  it  is  so. 
Herein  lies  one's  hope  and  one's  doom,  either  of 
which  is  one's  own  make. 

The  biologic  basis  for  habit  is  the  principle  found 
in  all  matter,  that  things  tend  to  act  as  they  have 
acted.  They  not  only  tend  to  do  the  things  they  have 
heretofore  done,  but  they  tend  to  do  them  in  the  same 
way.  This  is  especially  true  of  the  nervous  system, 
which  has  a  plasticity  that  yields  readily  to  impressions 
and  retains  them  with  great  accuracy  and  complete- 
ness. The  fact  that  the  nervous  system  has  done  a 
certain  thing  in  a  certain  way  constitutes  an  excuse 
for  the  performance  of  this  thing  in  the  way  it  was 
previously  performed  —  this  is  true  of  a  thought,  an 
act,  or  an  emotion.  Many  men  are  the  perpetual  slaves 
of  vile  thoughts,  because  in  youth  they  allowed  their 
minds  to  dwell  upon  vile  things.  The  work  of  many 
men  is  poor  and  ineffectual  because  in  youth  they 
w^re  allowed  to  go  about  their  work  in  a  weak,  vascil- 


Habit  45 

lating,  and  halting  way ;  and  the  emotions  of  many 
men  are  their  masters  because  they  were  not  properly 
restrained  in  childhood  and  youth.  But  many  a  maii 
is  a  tower  of  strength  because  his  years  have  been\ 
given  to  the  highest  and  noblest  types  of  thinking, 
to  the  performance  of  deeds  worthy  a  child  of  God, 
and  to  emotions  which  appropriately  accompany  such  / 
behavior.  When  a  person  decides  upon  a  course  of 
action,  he  not  only  chooses  this  one  particular  thing, 
but  he  chooses  what  particular  tendencies  he  will  set 
a-going  in  his  life  for  all  time.  He  not  only  decides 
what  manner  of  man  he  shall  be  for  the  time  being, 
but  he  estabhshes  tendencies  which  will  help  to  de- 
termine what  manner  of  man  he  shall  always  be. 

The  advantages  resulting  from  habits  which  are  the 
alHes  of  one's  well-being  are  many  and  great.  Habit 
simplifies  movements.  In  harnessing  a  horse  for  the 
first  time  a  boy  makes  several  times  as  many  move- 
ments as  he  will  make  six  months  later ;  in  dressing 
his  feet  a  baby  makes  more  movements  and  expends 
more  energy  than  will  be  necessary  finally  to  dress 
his  entire  body.  When  first  put  up  to  the  table,  the 
young  child  seeks  his  food  with  hands,  body,  and  feet. 
He  is  not  able  to  sit  quietly  and  reach  out  one  hand 
for  his  food.    Movements  at  first  are  very  complex 


46  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

and  many  of  them  quite  superfluous  —  not  so  when 
they  have  become  habitual. 

HaUt  makes  jor  accuracy.  At  the  end  of  six  months 
the  boy  not  only  harnesses  the  horse  with  fewer  move- 
ments and  in  much  less  time,  but  he  is  more  apt  to 
have  it  done  right,  to  have  both  holdbacks  and  both 
lines  fastened.  He  has  become  accurate,  makes 
fewer  mistakes,  is  more  trustworthy.  The  baby  has 
learned  to  feed  himself  with  one  hand  and  misses  his 
mouth  less  often.  He  is  a  sure  shot.  Feeding  him- 
self has  become  habitual  and  is  done  with  accuracy, 
and  so  it  is  with  all  processes  that  are* subject  to  habit. 
A  person  never  walks  well  while  he  is  learning  to 
walk,  nor  later  if  he  thinks  about  the  process  while 
performing  it.  Conscious  gestures  and  voice  modu- 
lations are  never  so  graceful  and  effective  as  they 
should  be.  There  was  a  time  when  the  skilled  pianist 
consciously  attended  to  the  music,  the  keyboard,  and 
his  hands,  but  no  longer  is  he  obliged  to  do  so.  He 
could  not  perform  if  he  should  try  to  do  so.  The 
hierarchy  of  habits  that  has  been  set  up  takes  care 
of  most  of  the  performance,  and  does  it  in  a  way  en- 
tirely impossible  for  the  higher  conscious  Hfe  —  the 
life  of  conscious  control. 

Habit  reduces  the  amount  of  fatigue  resulting  from 


Habit  47 

certain  activities.  This  is  due  partly  to  the  fact  that 
the  habitual  activities  are  simpler  and  more  accurate, 
and  thus  the  number  of  necessary  movements  is  re- 
duced ;  but  it  is  not  entirely  due  to  these  things.  After 
an  out-of-door  vacation  of  three  months  the  student  be- 
comes fearfully  fatigued  during  the  first  days  of  school. 
After  ten  months  of  school  the  student  becomes 
greatly  fatigued  for  the  first  days  of  vacation  if  he 
takes  up  any  ordinary  form  of  manual  labor.  In  a 
little  while  he  will  be  able  to  labor  all  day,  week  in 
and  week  out,  without  great  fatigue.  The  movements 
have  in  a  certain  sense  become  habitual.  The  child 
practicing  at  the  piano  cannot  stay  there  for  long  at  a 
time,  but  the  trained,  practiced,  habitual  pianist  will 
play  with  little  fatigue  for  hours  at  a  time. 

Habit  makes  for  conservatism.  The  bright  young 
fellow  whose  schooling  has  been  Hmited  to  a  few 
months  during  childhood,  seems  happy  and  contented 
as  he  goes  about  his  daily  task  of  drudgery.  He  per- 
sonally knows  no  other  life ;  this  one  has  become  ha- 
bitual to  him ;  it  practically  never  occurs  to  him  that 
another  is  possible.  Professor  James  in  his  **  Psy- 
chology" puts  it  thus:  — 

''Habit  is  the  enormous  fly  wheel  of  society,  its  most 
precious  conservative  agent.     It  alone  is  what  keeps  us 


48  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

all  within  the  bounds  of  ordinance,  and  saves  the  children 
of  fortune  from  the  envious  uprisings  of  the  poor.  It 
alone  prevents  the  hardest  and  most  repulsive  walks  of 
life  from  being  deserted  by  those  brought  up  to  tread 
therein.  It  keeps  the  fisherman  and  deckhand  at  sea 
through  the  winter;  it  holds  the  miner  in  his  darkness,  and 
nails  the  countryman  to  his  log  cabin  and  his  lonely  farm 
through  all  the  months  of  sorrow;  it  protects  us  from  in- 
vasion by  the  natives  of  the  desert  and  the  frozen  zone. 
It  dooms  us  all  to  fight  out  the  battle  of  life  upon  the  lines 
of  our  nurture  or  our  early  choice,  and  to  make  the  best 
of  a  pursuit  that  disagrees,  because  there  is  no  other  for 
which  we  are  fitted,  and  it  is  too  late  to  begin  again.  It 
keeps  different  social  strata  from  mixing.  Already  at  the 
age  of  twenty-five  you  can  see  the  professional  mannerisms 
settling  down  on  the  young  commercial  traveler,  on  the 
young  doctor,  on  the  young  minister,  on  the  young  coun- 
selor-at-law.  You  see  the  little  lines  of  cleavage  running 
through  the  character,  the  tricks  of  thought,  the  prejudices, 
the  ways  of  the  shop,  in  a  word,  from  which  the  man  can 
by  and  by  no  more  escape  than  his  coat  sleeve  can  sud- 
denly fall  into  a  new  set  of  folds.  On  the  whole,  it  is  best 
he  should  not  escape.  It  is  well  for  the  world  that  in  most 
of  us,  by  the  age  of  thirty,  the  character  has  set  like  plaster, 
and  will  never  soften  again." 

Habit  is  the  basis  0}  practical  faith  in  things  and  men. 
Without  any  question  of  the  ceiling  falling  in  upon  us, 
we  daily  assemble  in  large  numbers  in  recitation  rooms, 


Habit  49 

churches,  and  lecture  halls.  We  have  been  in  the 
habit  of  doing  this  and  the  ceilings  have  been  in  the 
habit  of  keeping  their  places.  We  never  stop  to  ques- 
tion the  probable  risk  of  doing  such  a  thing.  Unless 
the  danger  signal  is  up,  we  cross  bridges  without  taking 
thought.  We  have  done  this  without  question  so  long 
and  the  bridge  has  kept  its  place  for  us  so  faithfully 
that  we  put  impUcit,  although  probably  not  conscious, 
faith  in  its  proper  behavior  and  our  ultimate  suc- 
cess in  crossing  it  again.  Most  men  generally  speak 
the  truth.  The  habit  of  the  people  is  to  make  their 
language  represent  more  or  less  accurately  the  facts 
which  they  profess  to  portray  or  to  express.  My  be- 
havior is  largely  based  upon  my  faith  in  such  habits 
of  the  people.  I  make  my  arrangements  to  leave 
town  at  the  hour  announced  by  the  time-table.  I 
dress  for  dinner  at  the  time  announced  by  the  hotel 
directions.  I  attend  church  at  the  hour  announced.  I 
beUeve  that  the  scheduled  thing  will  happen  at  the 
time  set.  I  beheve  that  men  have  told  the  truth; 
that,  in  such  matters  at  least,  the  habit  of  the  people 
is  to  tell  the  truth,  and  I  express  my  practical  faith 
by  acting  accordingly.  I  give  notes  and  take  notes; 
I  give  deeds  for  property  and  take  them;  I  pay  hfe 
insurance  and  my  rent  in  advance  because  I  beheve 


50  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

in  certain  faithfulnesses  on  the  part  of  individuals  and 
organized  societies ;  and  this  faithfulness  is  based 
upon  certain  habits  of  action  by  individuals  and  or- 
ganized societies,  which  I  have  repeatedly  observed. 

Habit  makes  for  progress.  Paradoxical  as  it  may 
seem  at  first  thought,  all  progress  is  based  upon  con- 
servatism, upon  holding  the  ground  already  gained. 
If  we  did  only  new  things  as  the  new  days  come,  or 
if  we  did  old  things  in  new  ways  only,  we  should  ac- 
complish little  and  progress  not  at  all.  The  great  ball 
pitcher,  the  great  organist,  the  great  accountant,  the 
great  executive,  is  not  the  person  who  tries  one  thing 
one  day  and  another  the  next,  but  is  the  person  who 
selects  out  of  the  many  possible  ways  the  one  best 
suited  to  himself  and  his  work,  and  does  it  that  way 
day  after  day  and  year  after  year.  All  hope  of  prog- 
ress Hes  in  conserved  habits,  in  dismissing  to  the  lower 
centers  activities  which  were  formerly  under  the  di- 
rection of  the  higher,  conscious  control,  thus  leaving 
the  higher  centers  free  for  more  advanced  and  complex 
work.  There  is  no  hope  for  the  student  of  mathe- 
matics so  long  as  he  does  the  multiplication  table  with 
his  higher  centers  ;  such  an  alphabet  of  the  subject 
should  have  gone  down,  and  the  head  should  be  free 
for  the  relations  of  the  problem.    There  is  no  hope 


Habit  51 

for  the  public  speaker  who  is  obliged  to  attend  con- 
sciously to  the  grammar  and  pronunciation  of  his 
speech ;  such  things  should  have  become  habitual, 
and  the  lower  centers  should  be  unerring  in  producing 
the  right  form  of  expression.  And  the  man  or  woman 
who  cannot  strike  off  at  once  the  answer  to  most  practi- 
cal moral  questions  as  they  arise  from  day  to  day  is 
greatly  handicapped.  The  habit  of  appropriate  re- 
actions should  be  so  deeply  ground  into  the  individual 
that  decisions  upon  such  matters  will  be  prompt  and 
correct. 

Now  habit,  in  all  these  respects  which  we  have  been 
considering,  may  make  or  mar  the  individual,  and 
which  it  shall  do  depends  upon  one  thing  only,  viz. 
whether  these  habits  which  are  more  than  ''second 
nature"  are  for  us  or  against  us;  whether  they  are 
our  allies  or  our  enemies.  They  are  equally  powerful 
whichever  way  they  pull.  If  they  pull  with  us,  for 
our  highest  good,  who  or  what  can  successfully  stand 
out  against  us?  But  if  they  pull  against  us,  where 
in  all  the  earth  can  we  gain  reenforcement  strong 
enough  and  steadfast  enough  to  help  us  win  the  battle 
against  them?  One  large  standard,  at  least,  is  here 
set  for  the  parent,  the  teacher,  and  the  more  mature 
student. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THE  PSYCHOLOGY  OF  WORK 

In  writing  to  the  Philippians  St.  Paul  in  one  of  his 
letters  admonished  them  to  work  out  their  own  salva- 
tion with  fear  and  trembling.  He  realized,  and  wanted 
them  to  reaUze,  that  much  of  a  man's  fitness  for  sal- 
vation is  brought  about  by  the  work  he  does;  and  so 
in  the  epistle  of  James,  he  says,  "Faith  without  works 
is  dead."  Fundamental  as  is  faith  in  the  accomplish- 
ment of  merely  temporal  ends,  to  say  nothing  of  the 
Kingdom  of  God,  he  reahzed  that  under  normal  con- 
ditions the  measure  of  one's  faith  is  the  work  which 
results  from  it. 

Psychology  says  at  least  this  much:  "One's  tem- 
poral salvation  and  one's  final  fitness  for  eternal  sal- 
vation are  determined  largely  by  the  work  one  does, 
the  motive  behind  it,  and  the  spirit  carried  into  it." 

A  person  is  as  large  as  the  thing  he  does,  but  no 
larger.  One's  own  doing  is  the  expressed  side  of  his 
life,  and  this  is  the  only  side  that  can  be  read,  and, 
therefore,  the  only  side  to  be  spoken  of  by  the  psy- 

5* 


The  Psychology  of  Work  53 

chologist  with  any  degree  of  assurance.  Aside  from 
a  person's  inheritance,  which  is  always  an  important 
factor  but  one  over  which  he  has  no  control,  his  phys- 
ical, mental,  and  spiritual  development  and  efficiency 
are  directly  due  more  to  the  work  he  does  than  to  all 
other  things  combined.  One's  trade  or  profession 
finally  settles  down  all  over  him  and  the  marks  of  his 
calling  are  unmistakable.  In  the  process  of  forging 
out  a  piece  of  the  world's  work  he  has  forged  out  his 
own  particular  manner  of  man. 

The  old  educational  maxim,  ''We  learn  to  do  by 
doing,"  has  a  whole  truth,  a  half  truth,  or  a  whole 
falsehood  in  it,  depending  entirely  upon  one's  inter- 
pretation. If  it  means  that  we  learn  to  do  certain 
definite  things  by  doing  those  things  or  other  very 
closely  related  things,  then  it  possesses  a  whole  truth. 
If  it  means  that  we  cannot  learn  to  do  an)^hing  unless 
we  actually  do  something,  it  possesses  half  a  truth. 
It  is  correct  in  its  assertion  of  the  importance  of  doing, 
but  is  not  defined  in  its  objects.  But  if  it  means,  as 
probably  most  teachers  have  interpreted  it,  that  we 
learn  to  do  anything  by  doing  somethings  it  is  not 
only  void  of  truth,  but  positively  false. 

So  far  is  it  from  being  true  that  we  get  general  doing 
ability  by  doing  some  one  thing  well,  that  the  truth 


54  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

is  diametrically  the  opposite,  viz.  that  by  doing  cer- 
tain definite,  specific  things  well,  we  to  a  certain  degree 
become  incapacitated  for  doing  other  definite,  specific, 
but  unrelated  things  well.  The  field  for  illustration 
here  is  wide.  Bergstrom  has  shown  this  truth  by  the 
use  of  cards.  A  stack  of  different  figured  cards,  after 
being  carefully  shuffled,  was  thrown  in  books,  each 
book  containing  all  cards  bearing  the  same  figure  or 
sign.  The  plan  was  to  find  in  what  length  of  time 
he  would  be  able  thus  to  throw  the  cards.  During 
the  first  series  of  trials  the  books  always  came  in  the 
same  order,  say  —  i,  2,  3,  4.  At  the  end  of  each  trial 
the  time  was  noted,  and  after  the  subject  had  rested, 
another  trial  was  made.  The  point,  of  course,  was  to 
reach  the  minimum  of  time  and  maximum  of  skill  in 
doing  over  and  over  again  this  one  thing  in  exactly 
the  same  way.  A  little  progress  was  noticed  from 
beginning  to  finish,  but  there  came  a  time  when  re- 
peated efforts  resulted  in  no  gains,  and  so  this  first 
series  of  the  experiment  ended.  After  ample  time 
for  complete  rest  from  fatigue,  a  second  series  of  trials 
was  made,  with  the  introduction  of  but  one  variation; 
this  time  the  order  of  the  books  of  cards  was  different. 
Instead  of  i,  2,  3,  4,  the  order  may  have  been  2,  i,  4,  3. 
Here  was  the  same  subject  with  the  experience  com- 


The  Psychology  of  Work  55 

ing  from  his  first  long  series  of  trials  doing  practically 
what  he  had  before  been  doing  time  and  time  again. 
What  we  find  is  instructive  and  significant,  viz.  that 
the  first  time  the  cards  were  thrown  in  the  second 
series  the  time  required  was  greater  than  for  the  first 
trial  in  the  first  series;  and  so  throughout  the  entire 
second  series,  each  trial  required  more  time  than  the 
corresponding  trial  in  the  first  series.  Furthermore  it 
was  found  that  to  reach  the  minimum  of  time  and 
maximum  of  skill  in  the  second  series  required  more 
trials  and  more  time  than  in  the  first.  Here  we  find 
a  man  to  a  degree  handicapped  in  doing  a  thing  which 
was  very  closely  related  to  what  he  had  been  doing. 
He  would  have  done  better  at  the  second  task  had  he 
not  done  the  first  at  all. 

In  athletics  a  promising  sprinter,  who  is  transferred 
from  the  sprinting  event  to  the  pole  vault  event,  finds 
that  after  a  season  of  faithful,  consistent  training  for 
pole  vaulting  he  requires  more  time  to  make  the  hun- 
dred yards  dash.  It  might  be  supposed  that  since  he 
had  spent  the  year  in  systematic  training  as  an  athlete 
he  would,  at  all  events,  hold  his  own  as  a  sprinter; 
but  not  so  —  new  movements  have  been  formed  at 
the  expense  of  old  ones,  new  muscular  combinations 
have  been  confirmed  and  he  is  to  a  degree  an  incapaci- 


56  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

tated  machine  for  any  performance  except  the  one  for 
which  he  has  taken  definite  training.  What  one  does 
—  one's  work  —  settles  down  all  over  him  like  a 
plaster  of  Paris  cast,  or  all  through  him  Hke  iron  in 
the  blood,  and  so  it  comes  to  be  that  a  person  is  as 
large  as  the  work  he  does. 

In  personal  development  there  is  no  substitute  for 
work.  The  great  artists  have  known  this,  and  among 
the  greatest  of  them  have  been  men  who  not  only  put 
the  finishing  touches  upon  the  stone,  but  actually 
quarried  the  stone  from  the  mountain  side.  We 
speak  of  brainy  statesmen,  ministers,  financiers.  No 
one  who  has  brains  will  doubt  that  brains  count,  but 
a  truer  way  to  classify  such  men  would  be  upon  the 
basis  of  industry.  Of  course  our  greatest  statesmen, 
our  wisest  and  most  influential  churchmen,  and  our 
most  successful  business  men  are  men  of  brains,  and 
yet  I  fancy  that  they  do  not  have  a  corner  on  the 
brains  in  their  particular  fields  of  activity ;  but  we  can 
hardly  find  their  equals  in  energy,  in  the  amount  of 
work  they  do.  Many  a  man,  deservedly  unheard  of, 
has  started  with  as  good  brain  capital  as  any  of  these, 
but  has  failed  to  realize  upon  himself  through  hard  work. 

There  is  no  substitute  for  hard  work.  Luck  is  no 
substitute.    Brilliancy  is  no  substitute.    The  man  who 


The  Psychology  of  Work  57 

is  doomed  to  be  unlucky  is  the  one  who  believes  in 
luck;  and  what  is  apt  to  prove  one  of  the  greatest 
curses  in  the  world  is  the  so-called  blessing  of  ver- 
satihty  —  the  abihty  to  do,  without  training,  many 
things  passably  well.  Such  a  versatile  man  is,  as  a 
rule,  doomed  to  mediocrity,  doomed  to  be  a  dabbler 
in  many  things  and  a  success  at  none.  Being  able 
to  do  any  one  of  many  things  fairly  well,  he  too  often 
prefers  to  change  from  one  to  another,  when  he  finds 
himself  outclassed  by  those  who  are  especially  pre- 
pared to  excel. 

The  success  which  many  men  with  limited  "school- 
ing" have  had  is  due  more  than  to  anything  else  to 
habits  of  systematic  work  at  something  that  is  worth 
while.  Many  a  listless,  careless  student  would  re- 
ceive greater  help,  better  preparation  for  his  life's 
work,  if  he  were  taken  from  school  at  once  and  put 
to  a  task  that  demands  application  and  thoroughness. 
Unless  the  school  offers  opportunities  for  such  appli- 
cation and  thoroughness  and  insists  upon  the  student's 
living  up  to  his  opportunity,  it  misses  its  main  chance 
in  child  saving. 

When  Booker  T.  Washington  reached  Hampton 
Institute,  he  was  such  a  sorry  specimen  that  it  was 
questionable  whether  he  should  be  admitted.    It  was 


58  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

the  recognized  mission  of  the  school  to  reach  down 
and  out,  to  bring  in  and  teach  the  poor  and  ignorant 
black  people,  but  the  reach  to  Washington  seemed 
a  long  one  indeed.  He  persisted,  however,  and  was 
finally  given  a  chance.  In  telling  of  his  introduction 
to  the  Institute,  Mr.  Washington  has  said:  — 

"When  I  reached  Hampton  and  presented  myself  as 
a  candidate  for  admission  to  the  school,  the  instructors 
who  saw  me  at  first  were  not  at  all  certain  that  they  cared 
to  enroll  me  as  a  pupil,  a  fact  at  which  I  do  not  wonder  as 
I  remember  the  appearance  I  must  have  presented  to  them. 
It  had  taken  considerable  time  for  me  to  make  the  journey 
over  the  mountains.  I  had  walked  a  good  share  of  the 
way,  and  had  often  slept  in  barns,  before  I  had  occupied 
my  lodging  under  the  sidewalk  in  Richmond.  My  clothes 
had  been  none  too  good  when  I  started;  they  were  much 
worse  when  I  reached  my  journey's  end.  I  wanted  to 
stay,  and  pleaded  to  be  allowed  to  do  so !  I  said  I  would 
work.  They  wanted  to  know  what  I  could  do.  I  told 
them  what  I  had  been  doing.  Finally  one  of  the  instructors 
took  me  to  a  room  which  needed  sweeping,  gave  me  a 
broom,  and  told  me  to  see  how  well  I  could  clean  the  room. 
I  suppose  that  I  swept  and  dusted  that  room  as  many  as 
four  or  five  times  before  I  was  satisfied  with  it.  Then  one 
of  the  lady  teachers  came  and  inspected  my  work,  and 
reported  that  it  was  satisfactory.  That  was  my  entrance 
examination.  I  passed  it  successfully,  and  was  allowed 
to  stay." 


The  Psychology  of  Work  59 

But  where  had  Mr.  Washington  been  prepared 
for  the  examination?  Listen  to  his  own  words:  "Not 
far  from  here,  Charleston,  in  the  family  of  a  noble 
white  woman  whom  most  of  you  know,  I  received  a 
training  in  the  matters  of  thoroughness,  cleanliness, 
promptness,  and  honesty,  which,  I  confess  to  you,  in 
a  large  measure,  enables  me  to  do  the  work  for  which 
I  am  given  credit.  As  I  look  over  my  life  I  feel  that 
the  training  which  I  received  in  the  family  of  Mrs.  Viola 
Ruffner,  was  a  most  valuable  part  of  my  education." 

There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  magnificent  work 
which  Booker  T.  Washington  has  done  for  his  people, 
and  incidentally  for  his  country,  is  the  direct  result 
of  this  early  training  in  the  systematic  and  complete 
performance  of  every  task,  however  menial.  There  is 
positively  no  substitute  for  consistent,  persistent  hard 
work  at  something  that  needs  to  be  done. 

Professor  Hodge,  of  Clark  University,  found  that 
tramps  set  to  odd  jobs  about  the  house  or  grounds 
know  practically  nothing  about  work;  they  do  not 
know  how  to  do  anything  right.  I  do  not  mean  to 
say  that  the  schools  are  responsible  for  this.  I  mean 
to  say  only  that  the  shortage  of  character  in  these 
cases  is  the  more  or  less  direct  outcome  of  improper 
training  in  childhood,  of  failure  to  learn  to  do  things 


6o  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

and  do  them  well,  and  that  this  hints  strongly  at  what 
the  school  might  attempt  to  do  in  order  to  forestall 
such  results. 

Those  who  have  been  most  successful  in  the  refor- 
mation of  youthful  criminals  have  magnified  system- 
atic work  as  a  curative  for  criminality.  Generally 
speaking,  the  plan  has  been  for  the  superintendent 
or  director  to  ascertain  as  fully  as  possible  by  all 
legitimate  direct  and  indirect  means  just  what  is  the 
convict's  capacity  for  work  along  dififerent  Hnes,  intel- 
lectual, mental,  or  physical.  This  comes  first,  and 
sufficient  time  is  taken  to  do  it  well.  Then  certain 
tasks  known  to  be  within  the  capability  of  the  convict 
are  assigned,  with  the  directions,  stated  or  implied, 
that  they  are  to  be  accomplished  to  the  best  of  the 
workman's  abihty.  Here  exceptional  judgment  and 
firmness  on  the  part  of  the  superintendent  are  required. 
The  convict  soon  learns  that  dinner  time,  or  supper 
time,  or  bedtime  never  comes  until  the  task  is  done 
satisfactorily;  done  in  such  a  way  as  to  satisfy  the 
superintendent  that  it  has  been  done  as  well  as  the 
given  convict  is  able  to  do  it.  Years  of  this  sort  of 
discipline  result  in  two  things:  (i)  ability  to  do  cer- 
tain things  better  than  the  average  citizen  of  any  com- 
munity can  do  them,  and   (2)    therefore,  Hking  for 


The  Psychology   of  Work  6i 

tasks  and  interest  in  doing  them.  In  ninety  per  cent 
of  such  cases  the  reform  is  accompUshed  when  this 
twofold  result  has  been  attained  —  skill  in  doing  some- 
thing and  interest  in  it.  The  business  of  the  school 
is  formation,  but  if  it  would  bear  in  mind  this  twofold 
ideal,  there  would  be  less  need  for  reformation  later 
in  the  child's  life. 

One  thing  that  should  never  be  lost  sight  of  in  all 
training  is  that  the  greatest  thing  done,  the  most  im- 
portant result  reached  in  one's  work  is  the  accomplish- 
ment of  the  worker.  The  largest  thing  a  person  does 
in  all  his  doing  is  the  making  of  himself.  When  a 
child  has  been  allowed  to  loaf  through  a  school  course, 
his  attainments  are  not  what  they  should  be,  but  this 
is  of  comparatively  little  importance;  the  important 
result  is  that  the  habit  of  loafing  has  been  confirmed, 
and  the  school  turns  out  a  loafer  and  not  a  worker  — 
it  turns  out  one  whose  tendencies  are  toward  tramp- 
dom  and  not  toward  productive,  independent  citizenship. 

Regardless  of  the  particular  course  of  study  a  child 
follows,  his  own  making  or  unmaking  depends  upon 
the  completeness  and  exactness  of  performance,  and 
the  absence  of  mere  approximation.  And  so  it  is  in 
regard  to  the  much-mooted  question  of  change  of  cur- 
riculum.   No  doubt  many  adjustments  need  to  be 


62  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

made,  but  this  never  can  be  a  question  of  more  than 
secondary  importance.  The  thing  of  overshadowing, 
all-pervading  importance,  let  it  be  repeated,  is  com- 
pleteness and  exactness  of  performance.  This  is  the 
kind  of  work  that  accomplishes  the  workman.  When 
people  grasp  this  fact,  they  will  from  sheer  selfishness, 
if  from  no  higher  motive,  do  their  best;  it  will  be  a 
matter  of  self-preservation  and  self-realization  with 
them  to  do  fully  and  perfectly  everything  they  under- 
take. Then  the  superintendent  can  take  up  his  office 
duties,  confident  that  there  will  be  no  shirking  teachers ; 
then  the  shopper  will  be  sure  of  full  measure,  and  the 
housewife  need  not  worry  about  adulterated  food 
stuffs.  When  people  fully  reahze  that  every  time  an 
arm  is  reached  out  (literally  or  figuratively)  to  do  a 
thing,  one  end  of  the  arm  is  attached  to  the  doer  and 
works  upon  him  as  truly  as  the  other  end  works  upon 
the  canvas  or  the  washboard,  they  will  begin  to  ap- 
preciate the  reflexive  effect  which  work  has  upon  the 
worker  —  they  will  see  how  much  one's  own  character 
is  the  direct  answer  to  one's  own  life  of  action  or  be- 
havior. For  such  an  individual  work  will  at  once 
become  a  means  to  character  as  an  end,  and  people 
will  set  about  to  work  out  their  own  salvation  with 
fear  and  trembling. 


CHAPTER  VII 

MEMORY 

No  question  in  the  entire  realm  of  psychology  has 
received  so  much  attention  as  memory,  and  probably 
no  subject  in  the  fields  of  both  science  and  speculation 
has  been  more  erroneously  discussed. 

To  get  at  anything  like  an  accurate  conception 
of  memory,  two  things  at  least  need  to  be  noted: 
(i)  People  differ  very  greatly  in  their  ability  to  recall 
isolated^  disconnected  events  or  things.  Some  people 
with  apparently  Httle  or  no  effort  recall  dates,  places, 
names,  and  all  kinds  of  disconnected  matters.  This 
is  what  Morgan  calls  Desultory  Memory.  Those 
who  can  do  this  thing  in  this  way  have  always  been 
able  to  do  it ;  they  have  not  acquired  it.  They  do  not 
know  how  they  do  it.  There  is  no  "how."  If  there 
were,  it  would  no  longer  be  Desultory  but  would  be- 
come Systematic  Memory.  The  "how"  makes  it 
Systematic.  It  follows  that  Desultory  Memory  can- 
not, as  such,  be  cultivated,  for  cultivation  introduces 

63 


64  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

a  method,  which  constitutes  it  at  once  as  Systematic 
and  not  Desultory.  (2)  Memory  is  a  resultant.  Mem- 
ory is  not  positive  in  the  sense  that  it  is  a  faculty  or 
an  activity  with  which  we  do  something.  Memory  is, 
to  put  it  flatly,  what  happens  because  something 
else  has  happened.  It  is  the  answer,  the  fruitage, 
the  resultant.  Memory  does  not  stand  on  its  own  feet, 
so  to  speak.  It  cannot  in  itself  be  cultivated.  Mem- 
ory training,  at  least,  is  a  misnomer.  Memory  never 
has  been  trained  and  never  will  be  trained.  It  is  a 
resultant  and  not  a  process.  In  training  children  in 
accuracy  and  speed  in  addition,  the  training  comes  in 
the  process  of  arriving  at  the  answer  and  not  in  the 
answer  itself. 

Individuals,  of  course,  vary  greatly  in  their  power 
of  retentiveness  due  to  difference  in  nervous  plasticity, 
which  cannot  be  changed.  The  problem  of  good  re- 
taining for  a  given  individual  is  nothing  more  or  less 
than  the  problem  of  good  getting.  Good  getting  by 
the  pupil  implies  good  teaching  by  the  teacher.  In 
general,  good  getting  and  good  teaching  consist  of  two 
things  only  —  the  application  of  the  subject  under  con- 
sideration to  all  sides  of  the  childj  and  the  application 
0}  all  sides  oj  the  subject  to  the  child.  This  principle 
must  not  be  overlooked.     Some  subjects   lend  them- 


Memory  65 

selves  to  much  more  varied  treatment  than  others. 
The  wise  teacher  will  see  the  hmitations  of  each. 

Firsts  then,  as  far  as  possible,  the  subject  should  ap- 
peal to  all  sides  of  the  child.  Many  city  bom  and  bred 
children,  while  in  school,  know  the  definitions  and 
uses  of  our  common  agricultural  plants,  and  many 
of  them  know,  in  a  general  way,  plant  distribution 
throughout  the  world;  but  their  information,  if  such 
it  may  be  called,  does  not  stick,  and  we  say  they  do  not 
fg-member  well.  Our  diagnosis  is  wrong.  They  did 
not  in  the  first  place  member  well.  If  the  subject 
had  been  taught  in  such  a  way  as  to  appeal  to  all 
sides  of  the  child,  he  would  not  have  forgotten  it.  He 
could  not  have  forgotten  it.  If  the  child  could  have 
seen,  tasted,  smelled,  and  handled  these  agricultural 
products,  and  actually  have  witnessed  the  use  to  which 
they  could  be  put,  if  the  processes  of  preparation  had 
been  adequate,  the  information  would  have  stuck. 
He  could  not  by  any  effort  have  forgotten  it.  And 
then  we  should  say  that  he  remembers  well,  which  of 
course  is  true;  but  the  large  truth  psychologically  is 
that  he  had  memhered  it  well  in  the  getting,  with  the 
result  that  he  could  not  forget  it.  Memory  is  a  re- 
sultant.    Good  holding  depends  upon  good  getting. 

Secondj  all  sides  of  the  subject  under  consideration 


66  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

should  be  presented  to  the  child  if  we  expect  him  to 
grasp  it,  and  so  retain  it.  The  child  should  see  the 
thing  in  all  its  relations  —  the  relations  of  place,  time, 
cause  and  effect,  whole  and  part.  Much  of  the  his- 
tory work  in  schools,  for  example,  is  lost  because  each 
subject  is  taken  up  as  a  separate,  isolated  topic  in  no 
way  related  to  what  has  gone  before  or  to  what  fol- 
lows; and  then  children  are  credited  with  having  poor 
memories  for  history.  We  expect  them  to  r^- member 
things  which  had  never  been  memhered.  We  expect 
them  to  hold  things  which  they  never  had.  We 
expect  them  to  retain  things  which  they  had  never 
attained. 

As  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States  is  usually 
taught  in  our  public  schools,  not  one  child  in  a  thou- 
sand remembers  a  single  thing  that  is  worth  while. 
He  has  not  known  anything  worth  while.  He  may 
have  committed  the  document  to  memory  as  he  would 
a  declamation,  but  that  is  far  from  knowing  it.  To 
know  a  thing  is  to  get  it  in  its  relations.  What  were 
the  forces  which  made,  it,  and  what  were  the  forces 
which  it  made?  What  was  pecuHar  to  the  place  and 
time  which  made  the  thing  practically  inevitable?  Of 
what  larger  movement  is  it  a  part  and  what  are  the 
important  parts  or  phases  of  it  as  a  movement? 


Memory  67 

A  presupposition  for  remembering  the  Constitution 
is  that  it  should  have  been  known,  and  a  necessary 
condition  for  knowing  it  is  that  it  should  have  been 
seen  in  its  relations.  All  sides  of  it  should  have  ap- 
pealed to  the  learner.  The  Constitution  must  be 
seen  as  the  general  instrument  of  government  result- 
ing from  hundreds  of  years  of  conflict  and  develop- 
ment. In  it  must  be  seen  the  old  navigation  laws, 
the  Stamp  Act  and  its  repeal,  the  Mutiny  Act,  the 
Colonial  and  Continental  congresses,  the  Boston  Tea 
Party,  the  Boston  Massacre,  Lexington  and  Concord, 
Bunker  Hill,  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  the 
Articles  of  Confederation,  the  numerous  attempts  to 
remodel  the  Articles,  Valley  Forge,  the  surrender  at 
Yorktown.  Unless  these  things  can  be  seen  as  contrib- 
uting finally  to  this  result,  the  spirit  and  genius,  and 
therefore  the  significance,  of  the  Constitution  are 
lost;   it  is  not  comprehended  and  so  is  not  retained. 

And  Hkewise  the  significance  of  the  Constitution 
cannot  be  comprehended  unless  we  know  it  as  the  in- 
strument of  government  under  which  our  history  as  a 
nation  has  been  made.  The  questions  which  have 
arisen  in  our  national  history  are  to  be  determined  in 
the  light  of  this  general  instrument  of  government, 
and  the  Constitution  itself  can  be  understood  only  as 


68  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

we  see  its  mark  upon  all  important  questions  of  state 
since  its  adoption.  The  only  way  to  know  a  law  fully 
is  to  make  it  operative.  So  it  is  with  the  Constitution, 
the  general  law  of  the  land.  It  not  only  stands  as  the 
great  generalized  effect  of  the  years  that  had  gone 
before,  but  it  stands  out  as  the  great  semi- cause  of  the 
events  which  followed.  The  Kentucky  and  the  Virginia 
Resolutions,  the  Hartford  Convention,  the  Missouri 
Compromise,  the  Monroe  Doctrine,  the  Acts  of  NuUi- 
fication,  the  Wilmot  Proviso,  the  Omnibus  Bill,  the 
Kansas-Nebraska  Act,  the  Dred  Scott  Decision,  the  Act 
of  Secession,  Reconstruction,  the  Income  Tax,  are  all 
constitutional  questions,  and  no  one  can  know  the 
Constitution  who  does  not  see  its  marks  on  all  such 
questions. 

This  illustration  has  been  given  thus  fully,  not  as  a 
lesson  in  history,  but  in  order  to  show  what  is  meant 
by  presenting  a  topic  in  its  relations.  The  purpose  is  to 
illustrate  one  phase  of  the  Psychology  of  Memory,  viz. 
that  good  holding  depends  upon  good  getting;  and 
that  one  phase  of  good  getting  consists  in  presenting 
to  the  learner  the  subject  under  consideration  in  as 
many  of  its  relations  as  possible. 

Other  things  being  equal,  vividness,  recency,  and  rep- 
etition in  presentation  strengthen  retention.    Through 


Memory  69 

vividness,  one  remembers  his  first  sunset  at  sea,  the 
features  of  his  first-born  child,  his  veiled  bride,  the 
agonized  expression  on  the  condemned  man's  face. 
The  emotional  tone  was  such  that  the  experience 
burned  itself  in  at  once,  never  to  be  lost  —  because  of 
the  way  in  which  it  was  gotten.  Recency  is  an  im- 
portant factor  only  in  that  things  have  not  had  time  to 
fade  out  since  their  acquirement,  and  repetition  means 
nothing  more  than  getting  the  same  thing  over  and 
over  again. 

If  good  getting,  full  comprehension,  is  the  secret  of 
good  retention,  it  becomes  apparent  at  once  how  im- 
portant it  is  that  the  avenues  for  the  transmission  of 
the  raw  stuff  of  information  should  be  kept  in  their 
normal  state.  The  child's  eyes  and  ears  should  be  as 
much  the  special  care  of  the  teacher  as  the  recita- 
tion or  discipline;  even  more  so,  for  these  are  funda- 
mental ;  they  are  the  presuppositions  of  all  intelhgence 
and  should,  therefore,  be  the  first  concern  of  parent 
and  teacher. 

A  great  deal  has  been  said  about  eye-mindedness 

—  ability  to  recall  visual  images,  and  ear-mindedness 

—  ability  to  recall  auditory  images,  to  say  nothing  of 
olfactory,  gustatory,  and  motor  images. 

People  vary  greatly  in  their  power  to  image  in  terms 


yo  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

of  the  various  senses.  Professor  James  gives  the 
case  of  a  man  who  could  not  get  the  visual  image  of 
his  family  at  the  breakfast  table.  He  remembers  the 
order  in  which  they  sit  at  the  table,  but  cannot,  as  we 
say,  see  them.  He  has  no  image.  Many  of  my  own 
students  cannot  image  their  mothers'  faces.  They 
remember  that  they  have  dark  or  light  complexion, 
that  they  are  of  a  certain  height,  that  they  have  such 
and  such  features,  but  they  have  no  distinct  image. 
Others,  however,  think  that  the  image  is  almost  as 
complete  and  vivid  as  the  impression  itself.  Many 
who  have  poor  or  no  visual  images  have  well-developed 
auditory  images,  and  many,  of  course,  have  not. 
Many  of  my  own  students  are  sure  that  they  have 
gustatory  and  olfactory  images,  but  as  many  are  just 
as  sure  that  they  have  not.  Practically  all  have  motor 
images,  but  in  varying  degrees  of  perfection. 

In  pedagogy  more  attention  has  been  given  to  the 
various  types  of  mental  imagery  than  should  have 
been.  It  does  not  follow  that  because  a  child  is  strong 
in  one  type,  he  should  be  developed  along  this  line. 
If  mastering  a  topic  is  the  aim  of  school  work,  if  this 
is  the  end  of  education,  of  course  let  the  child  do  it 
in  the  easiest  way;  but  if  the  aim  of  school  work,  the 
end  of  education,  is  the  development  of  the  child,  the 


Memory  71 

easy  method  of  mastery  might  very  well  defeat  the  end. 
Because  a  child  is  "born  long"  at  one  place  and  ''born 
short"  at  another,  it  does  not  follow  that  he  should  be 
made  longer  at  the  long  places  and  shorter  at  the 
short  ones.  If  the  all-round  development  of  the  child 
is  the  thing  to  be  attained,  it  might  be  better  peda- 
gogy to  train  him  where  he  is  short.  The  objective 
results  in  the  way  of  subject-matter  mastered  would 
be  less  satisfactory,  but  there  should  be  more  of  child 
saving.  Furthermore,  Halleck  has  wisely  called  our 
attention  to  the  fact  that  the  data,  for  example,  for 
visual  imagery  are  not  necessarily  or  usually  gotten 
through  the  eye.  The  child  hears  a  vivid  description 
of  the  streets  of  Yokohama  and  at  once  forms  a  visual 
image  of  the  city.  Knowing  that  the  child  is  rich  in 
visual  imagery,  we  cannot  assume  that  this  imagery 
is  the  result  of  teaching  through  the  eye. 

The  only  safe  and  sane  attitude  to  take  is  that  the 
child  starts  with  a  given  capital,  and  that  he,  the  center 
of  the  educational  process,  is  to  be  made  strong  at  as 
many  points  as  possible;  that  the  way  to  do  this  is 
not  to  appeal  constantly  to  him  where  he  is  long, 
neither  where  he  is  short,  but  to  present  the  work  in 
such  a  way  as  to  appeal  to  as  many  sides  as  possible. 

Systematic  Memory  has  its  basis  in  the  laws  of  asso- 


72  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

ciation;  psychical  association  depends  directly  upon 
the  physical  habits  of  the  brain;  the  physical  habits 
of  the  brain  are  determined  by  its  plasticity  and  the 
variety  of  its  stimulations.  Neurology  teaches  us  that 
the  native  plasticity  of  nervous  matter  cannot  be 
changed.  It  follows,  therefore,  that  our  only  means 
of  affecting  the  memory  is  through  the  variety  of 
stimulations.  The  greatest  variety  comes  through  the 
double  process  of  letting  the  thing  appeal  to  all  sides 
of  the  individual,  and  by  letting  all  sides  of  the  thing 
appeal  to  the  individual.  Such  a  process  is  good 
teaching  by  the  teacher,  which  is  the  most  he  can  do 
toward  good  getting  by  the  pupil ;  and  good  getting  is 
the  most  the  pupil  can  do  to  insure  good  retention. 
Such  is  the  only  legitimate  memory  work  that  can  be 
done  in  the  schoolroom. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

ARRESTED  DEVELOPMENT 

Modern  science  has  shown  that  there  are  times  in 
the  development  of  all  living  things  —  plants,  animals, 
and  people  —  when  certain  things  can  be  done  better 
than  they  could  ever  have  been  done  before,  and  better 
than  they  can  be  done  at  any  future  time;  that  there 
are  certain  "ripe  times"  or  "nascent  stages"  in  the 
careers  of  all  Hving  things,  and  that  if  these  stages  are 
not  recognized  when  they  manifest  themselves,  the 
tendency  is  that  their  advantages  will  be  lost.  The 
individual  will  lose  his  appetite  or  desire,  or  he  will 
lose  his  aptitude,  and  it  may  be  that  he  will  lose  both 
his  appetite  and  his  aptitude.  If  the  broken  arm  is 
not  exercised  from  day  to  day,  but  is  allowed  to  re- 
main in  the  shng  week  after  week  unused,  there  will 
come  a  time  very  soon  when  it  will  have  passed  all 
possibility  of  ever  functioning  normally  again.  If  the 
twig  that  grows  through  the  fence  is  allowed  to  do  so 
year  after  year,  there  will  come  a  time  when  it  is  for- 
ever too  late  to  make  it  grow  straight.    There  was  a 

73 


74  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

time  when  the  kinks  might  have  been  straightened 
out,  but  failure  to  seize  upon  this  time  doomed  the 
twig  to  become  a  crooked  and  unshapely  tree.  This 
principle  manifests  itself  alike  in  those  things  which 
make  for  strength  and  those  which  make  for  weakness. 
Spalding  found  that  if  chicks  coming  from  the  shell 
should  be  hooded  at  once,  and  not  allowed  to  exercise 
the  instinct  to  feed  themselves  within  the  first  few  hours 
after  hatching,  they  would  require  a  longer  time  to 
learn  to  feed  themselves  than  if  they  had  not  been 
hooded.  He  found  that  the  extra  time  required  for 
this  accompHshment  was  exactly  proportional  to  the 
length  of  time  the  chicks  remained  hooded.  He 
says : — 

''A  chicken  that  has  not  heard  the  call  of  the  mother 
until  eight  or  ten  days  old,  then  hears  it  as  if  it  heard  it 
not.  I  regret  to  find  that  on  this  point  my  notes  are  not 
so  full  as  I  could  wish,  or  as  they  might  have  been.  There 
is,  however,  an  account  of  one  chicken  that  could  not  be 
returned  to  the  mother  when  ten  days  old.  The  hen  fol- 
lowed it,  and  tried  to  entice  it  in  every  way;  still,  it  con- 
tinually left  her  and  ran  to  the  house  or  to  any  person  of 
whom  it  caught  sight.  This  it  persisted  in  doing,  though 
beaten  back  with  a  small  branch  dozens  of  times,  and, 
indeed,  cruelly  maltreated.  It  was  also  placed  under 
the  mother  at  night,  but  it  again  left  her  in  the  morning." 


Arrested  Development  75 

In  the  laboratory  at  Clark  University  I  have  con- 
firmed practically  all  of  Spalding's  experiments  upon 
this  point.  The  only  legitimate  conclusion  to  be 
drawn  is  that  if  young  chicks  are  prevented  from  act- 
ing upon  even  so  fundamental  an  instinct  as  feeding 
themselves  when  the  instinct  first  manifests  itself,  the 
tendency  will  be  for  them  to  lose  the  instinct  entirely. 
This  is  doubtless  just  as  true  of  the  young  of  all  ani- 
mals. I  have  on  record  many  cases  of  a  similar  kind 
as  applied  to  children  in  their  development. 

Professor  James  makes  the  following  observations: 

"If  a  boy  grows  up  alone  at  the  age  of  games  and  sports 
and  learns  neither  to  play  ball,  nor  row,  nor  sail,  nor  ride, 
nor  skate,  nor  fish,  nor  shoot,  probably  he  will  be  sedentary 
to  the  end  of  his  days ;  and,  though  the  best  opportunities 
be  afforded  him  for  learning  these  things  later,  it  is  a  hun- 
dred to  one  that  he  will  pass  them  by  and  shrink  back 
from  the  effort  of  taking  those  necessary  first  steps,  the 
prospect  of  which,  at  an  earlier  age,  would  have  filled  him 
with  eager  delight.  The  sexual  passion  expires  after  a 
protracted  reign;  but  it  is  well  known  that  its  peculiar 
manifestations  in  a  given  individual  depend  almost  entirely 
on  the  habits  he  may  form  during  the  early  period  of  its 
activity.  Exposure  to  bad  company  then  makes  him  a 
loose  liver  all  his  days ;  chastity  kept  at  first  makes  the  same 
easy  later  on.      In  all  pedagogy  the  great  thing  is  to  strike 


76  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

the  iron  while  hot,  and  to  seize  the  wave  of  the  pupil's 
interest  in  each  successive  subject  before  its  ebb  has  come, 
so  that  knowledge  may  be  got  and  a  habit  of  skill  acquired 
— a  headway  of  interest,  in  short,  secured,  on  which  after- 
ward the  individual  may  float.  There  is  a  happy  moment 
for  fixing  skill,  for  making  boys  collectors  in  natural  history, 
and  presently  dissectors  and  botanists;  then  for  initiating 
them  into  the  harmonies  of  mechanics  and  the  wonders 
of  physical  and  chemical  law.  ...  In  each  of  us  a  satu- 
ration point  is  soon  reached  in  all  of  these  things,  the  im- 
petus of  our  purely  intellectual  zeal  expires,  and  unless 
the  topic  be  one  associated  with  some  urgent  personal  need 
that  keeps  our  wits  constantly  whetted  about  it,  we  settle 
into  an  equilibrium,  and  live  on  what  we  learned  when  our 
interest  was  fresh  and  instinctive  without  adding  to  the 
store.  ...  If  by  chance  we  ever  do  learn  anything  about 
some  entirely  new  topic,  we  are  afflicted  with  a  strange 
sense  of  insecurity,  and  we  fear  to  advance  a  resolute 
opinion.  But  with  things  learned  in  the  plastic  days  of 
instinctive  curiosity  we  never  lose  entirely  our  sense  of 
being  at  home." 

For  years  I  have  asked  teachers  to  report  cases 
which  have  come  within  their  personal  knowledge,  of 
children  who  at  some  time  had  given  evidence  of  pe- 
cuHar  strength  or  Hking  for  some  particular  kind  of 
activity,  but  who  were  prevented  from  developing  in 
this  line,  with  the  result  that  the  strength  or  the  Hking, 


Arrested  Development  77 

or  both,  were  lost.  Most  cases  come  within  the  fields 
of  drawing,  the  rudiments  of  art,  and  music.  Two 
typical  cases  are  as  follows:  — 

"When  I  was  a  young  child,  I  showed  such  skill  in 
drawing  that  my  friends  predicted  that  I  would  develop 
into  a  great  artist.  When  I  entered  school  at  the  age  of 
six,  my  parents  told  me  I  must  not  draw  pictures  in  school. 
I  found  the  book  work  in  school  dry  and  uninteresting, 
and  I  fell  to  drawing  pictures.  The  teacher  told  me  that 
school  was  no  place  to  draw  pictures  and  that  I  must  study 
my  book.  I  did  so;  but  from  time  to  time  I  relapsed  until 
the  teacher  punished  me  severely.  I  desisted  from  draw- 
ing the  remainder  of  the  school  term,  but  suffered  a  relapse 
at  the  opening  of  school  the  next  year  under  another  teacher. 
My  experience  this  year  was  similar  to  that  of  the  year 
before.  My  father  and  mother  insisted  that  it  was  very 
wrong  to  draw  pictures  in  school  and  often  repeated  the 
school  punishment.  I  finally  gave  it  up  altogether  and 
did  not  draw  another  picture  for  more  than  six  years. 
When  I  finished  the  common  schools,  I  was  licensed  to 
teach  and  taught  one  year  before  going  to  the  Normal 
School.  One  requirement  in  the  geography  work  at  this 
normal  school  was  map  drawing.  I  was  obliged  to  draw 
the  map  of  North  America.  My  map  was  a  good  one. 
I  had  not  lost  my  skill,  but  I  have  never  done  a  piece  of 
work  in  school  or  out  of  school  that  I  disliked  to  do  so 
much.  I  have  not  drawn  a  picture  or  map  since  and  shall 
never  do  so  unless  required  to  do  so  as  a  student.    I  hate 


78  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

the  very  thought   of   drawing   or   anything  that   pertains 
to  it." 

Surely  this   child   had   been   compelled   to  sin  away 
her  chance.     Another  teacher  gives  the  following:  — 

"I  knew  two  little  girls  ten  years  of  age  who  were  cousins. 
When  I  became  acquainted  with  them,  both  could  sing  well 
and  both  were  very  fond  of  music,  vocal  and  instrumental. 
Both  wished  to  take  lessons  on  the  piano.  Apparently 
the  parents  in  neither  case  were  able  to  purchase  a 
piano  and  employ  a  teacher.  In  a  short  time,  however, 
the  parents  of  one  child  did  so,  and  for  eight  years,  in 
addition  to  her  school  work,  which  has  been  exceptionally 
strong,  she  has  been  a  close  student  of  the  piano,  and  has 
developed  into  an  accomplished  pianist,  finding  her  greatest 
pleasure  in  her  music.  The  parents  of  the  other  child 
would  not  do  this.  The  piano  cost  too  much  and  it  made 
too  much  noise  anyway.  When  their  daughter  grew  to 
womanhood,  she  might  purchase  a  piano  with  her  own 
money  if  she  wished  to  do  so.  For  years  she  begged  for 
the  opportunities  of  her  cousin,  but  to  no  effect.  To-day 
she  knows  practically  nothing  about  music  and  the  pity 
is  she  cares  nothing  for  it." 

Every  one  knows  with  what  facility  a  young  child 
will  pick  up  the  mother  tongue  under  normal  condi- 
tions, and  how  readily  a  young  child  will  pick  up  a 
foreign  language  when   living  in   a   foreign   country. 


Arrested  Development  79 

It  is  a  matter  of  common  observation,  however,  that 
a  child  born  of  German  parents  and  brought  into  an 
English-speaking  country  in  infancy  has  the  same 
difficulty  in  adulthood  in  mastering  the  German  lan- 
guage that  an  EngHsh-born  person  has,  unless  German 
has  been  the  language  of  the  family;  and  it  is  also  a 
matter  of  common  observation,  especially  in  college 
and  university  life,  that  people  who  do  not  begin  the 
study  of  the  foreign  languages  until  after  maturity 
have,  as  a  rule,  great  difficulty  in  getting  a  good 
working  knowledge  of  them,  and  very  few  ever  be- 
come proficient.  School  superintendents  and  teachers 
should  have  this  in  mind  in  planning  courses  of  study, 
and  introduce  the  study  of  foreign  languages  into  the 
course  very  early.  In  the  United  States  the  age  of 
ten  is  not  too  young  to  begin  such  work.  Students 
need  to  bear  the  same  fact  in  mind,  and  thus  avoid 
the  postponement  of  language  work  until  it  is  too  late 
to  do  it  with  comparative  ease  and  proficiency. 

The  study  of  reUgious  experience  shows  that  this 
same  principle  holds  true  there  as  elsewhere.  More 
than  eighty- five  per  cent  of  the  people  who  take  the 
stand  for  higher  Hfe  through  conversion,  by  coming 
into  the  church  or  in  some  other  way,  do  so  between 
the  ages  of  thirteen  and  nineteen.    These  early  years 


8o  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

seem  to  be  ripe  years  for  such  experience.  Never  in 
the  life  of  the  individual  has  there  been  such  a  ripe 
time  for  such  experience,  and  never  again  will  there 
be.  Men  grown  old  out  of  the  faith  are  able  almost 
invariably  to  look  back  to  their  *' teens"  when  they 
had  the  inward  promptings  to  a  *' higher  life,"  but 
through  failure  to  act  upon  such  promptings  they 
finally  lost  them. 

Observation  and  experiment  confirm  the  judgment 
that  in  all  forms  of  Hfe  and  in  all  Hfe  experiences  there 
are  times  when  certain  things  can  be  done  better  than 
they  ever  could  have  been  done  before,  and  better  than 
they  can  ever  be  done  in  the  future.  Furthermore, 
that  if  the  ripe  time  or  nascent  stage  is  not  acted  upon, 
the  tendency,  at  least,  will  be  for  the  Hking  or  the  apti- 
tude for  the  particular  activity  to  be  lost.  In  many 
cases  both  are  lost. 

In  the  schoolroom  two  very  common  ways  of  induc- 
ing arrest  of  development  are:  (i)  The  grafting  of  too 
complex  forms  upon  a  comparatively  weak  and  unde- 
veloped nervous  system,  or  mind,  i.e.  by  crowding  the 
pupil  beyond  his  years  and  his  mental  and  physical 
strength.  There  seems  to  be  Httle  doubt  that  the 
child  can,  through  pressure,  bring  into  use  stored 
energy,  vital  force,  which  should  be  held  in  reserva- 


Arrested  Development  8i 

tion  for  future  years,  for  growth  or  functioning.  This 
is,  of  course,  nothing  more  or  less  than  killing  the 
goose  that  laid  the  golden  eggs.  If  the  little  girl 
burns  up  the  blood  in  her  cheeks  through  self- con- 
sciousness, she  can't  have  it  for  her  children  when 
she  reaches  womanhood.  (2)  The  holding  of  pupils 
too  long  to  simple  forms.  Kindergarten  methods  are 
good  only  for  young  children.  The  child  who  is  taught 
to  think  in  the  concrete  is  doomed  as  a  thinker  if  he 
is  held  too  long  to  the  concrete. 

It  is  true  that  no  one  can  progress  who  has  not  mas- 
tered the  rudiments  of  his  business,  but  it  is  equally 
true  that  no  one  can  progress  who  knows  only  the 
rudiments.  The  novelty  and  the  interest  in  much 
school  work  are  lost  by  moving  too  slowly  and  repeat- 
ing too  often.  As  the  child  develops,  the  thing  he 
does  must  develop  in  complexity  and  difficulty,  and  if 
he  is  held  too  long  to  the  simple  forms,  the  tendency 
will  be  for  him  to  become  **  simple-minded." 


CHAPTER   IX 

INTEREST  AND   ATTENTION 

In  recent  years  no  subject  has  received  so  much 
attention  in  educational  circles  as  that  of  interest. 
With  many  it  is  made  the  center  of  the  entire  process 
of  education.  The  Herbartian  psychology  and  peda- 
gogy, so  widely  represented  in  this  country,  have  em- 
phasized the  importance  of  interest,  and  the  movement 
known  as  child  study  has  brought  out  with  equal 
emphasis  the  need  of  directing  our  work  along  the 
lines  of  the  natural  interests  of  the  child.  So  far  as 
is  known  by  the  writer  everything  that  has  been  said 
on  this  point  by  both  of  these  schools  of  pedagogy 
is  true  and  worthy  of  attention.  Every  one  knows 
that  close  and  continued  attention  is  conditioned  by 
the  amount  of  genuine  interest  one  has  in  the  subject, 
and  so  it  is  considered  good  pedagogy  for  the  teacher 
to  observe  and  study  her  children  enough  to  find  out 
what  are  the  primary  interests  at  different  ages  and  of 
different  children.  It  can  be  seen  at  once  that  if  this 
principle  were  carried  out  in  the  extreme,  it  would  mean 

82 


Interest  and  Attention  83 

individual  teaching  for  every  child.  But,  on  the  other 
hand,  it  is  thought  that  great  good  is  derived  by  the 
child  from  v^ork  in  the  class.  Perhaps  not  quite  so 
much  Latin  or  arithmetic  will  be  acquired  as  under 
the  individual  plan,  but  the  good  derived  from  the 
class  associations,  the  give  and  take,  the  performance 
of  tasks  in  the  presence  of  one's  associates,  surely  has 
as  great  value  for  the  child  as  the  few  additional  chap- 
ters in  Latin  or  pages  in  arithmetic  which  he  might 
have  mastered  working  alone. 

It  would  be  rash  to  suppose  that  the  interests  of  all 
the  members  of  a  class  or  even  of  any  two  members 
are  identical,  however  well  the  classification  be  made. 
This  means  at  least  two  things.  In  the  first  place, 
classification  should  be  as  flexible  as  possible  so  that 
the  child's  natural  interest  will  not  be  entirely  crushed 
out  of  him.  In  the  second  place,  if  the  child  derives 
a  benefit  from  class  work  to  be  gotten  in  no  other  way, 
he  must  apply  himself  at  times  to  work  in  which  he 
does  not  find  a  very  great  interest. 

In  the  child's  play,  it  has  been  argued, — and  justly, 
I  think,  —  the  spontaneity  of  the  child  should  be 
recognized.  The  play  ideal  for  young  children  is 
unhampered,  unorganized,  undirected,  spontaneous 
play.     Yet  every  one  knows  that,  however  gratifying 


84  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

it  is  to  the  country  boy  to  throw  stones  in  all  directions 
he  cannot  do  this  when  he  moves  into  the  city.  So- 
ciety, as  well  as  the  individual,  has  its  rights.  But 
this  does  not  mihtate  against  the  doctrine  of  interest 
in  itself.  If  it  is  true  that  the  best  thing  for  my  child 
is  to  hve  a  perfectly  free,  spontaneous,  uncurbed  life, 
and  if  such  living  cannot  be  tolerated  in  the  city,  it 
becomes  at  once  imperative  to  leave  the  city.  But 
here  we  must  take  account  of  the  interests  of  parents 
and  older  brothers  and  sisters,  which  may  be  just  as 
natural  as  those  of  the  younger  ones  and  which  can 
be  gratified  only  by  city  hfe.  So,  while  the  doctrine  of 
interest  is  well  worthy  the  attention  which  it  receives, 
and  while  it  is  a  splendid  ideal  too  little  realized,  it  is 
very  doubtful  whether  it  can  stand  alone  as  the  center 
of  educational  theory  and  practice. 

Let  us  turn  to  another  phase  of  the  subject  which 
has  received  very  little  attention,  but  which  is  fraught 
with  as  much  pedagogical  significance  as  any  fact  of 
modern  pedagogy.  It  is  this:  interest  results  from 
attention.  A  Httle  insight  into  a  subject  is  absolutely 
necessary  before  an  interest  in  it  can  be  awakened. 
Interest  before  insight  through  some  form  of  attention 
is  impossible. 

Educational   psychologies   usually  show   how  it   is 


Interest  and  Attention  85 

that  we  attend  to  whatever  is  interesting,  but  where 
is  to  be  found  a  statement  of  the  equally  true  and  valu- 
able fact  that  we  are  apt  to  become  interested  in  what- 
ever we  attend  to?  It  is  in  the  intellectual  world 
somewhat  as  in  the  physical  world.  A  little  time  spent 
in  introspection  and  in  questioning  your  friends  will 
reveal  the  fact  that  the  food  stuff  you  have  learned  to 
eat  is  the  one  for  which  you  have  the  greatest  appetite 
and  which  you  crave  most.  The  person  for  whom 
bananas  were  nauseating  but  who  persisted  in  eating 
them  is  the  one  most  apt  to  be  a  banana  fiend.  Ask 
the  eaters  of  celery  and  parsnips.  Few  men  addicted 
to  the  use  of  tobacco  escaped  the  first  sickness  and 
enjoyed  the  taste  of  it  from  the  start.  In  short,  the 
things  we  like  best  are  apt  to  be  the  things  that  we 
have  learned  to  Hke.  Analogously  we  may  learn  to 
Hke  things  mentally  for  which  we  seemed  to  have  no 
natural  mental  appetite.  It  is  no  uncommon  thing 
to  hear  a  person  say,  "There  was  a  time  when  I  dis- 
hked  grammar  (or  arithmetic  or  history  or  Latin), 
but  now  it  is  my  favorite  study.  I  not  only  enjoy  it 
most,  but  find  that  I  can  accompUsh  more  in  it  than 
in  any  other  line  of  work."  One  illustration  I  have  in 
mind  is  that  of  a  young  man  who  studied  psychology 
four  years,  doing  good  work  but  not  having  his  chief 


86  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

interest  in  it.  He  was  asked  to  teach  the  subject, 
and  went  at  it  with  unbounded  energy.  He  held  him- 
self right  to  it.  He  looked  at  it  from  this  standpoint 
and  that.  He  used  his  pedagogical  skill  in  present- 
ing it  to  his  students.  Thus  he  got  a  grasp  of  the  sub- 
ject to  be  gained  only  by  long,  sustained  work.  With 
this  there  came  a  new  and  heretofore  unknown  interest 
in  the  subject,  so  that  when  he  entered  the  university 
he  elected  the  department  of  psychology  for  his  major, 
and  made  a  very  fine  record  as  a  student.  It  may  be 
said  that  if  he  had  spent  these  years  in  the  pursuit  of 
something  in  which  he  had  had  an  interest  from  the 
beginning,  he  would  have  accomplished  more,  but  I 
have  his  word  that  there  is  no  subject  which  has  for 
him  greater  fascination,  and  his  record  shows  that 
his  work  in  this  hne  was  as  efficient  as  in  any  other. 

It  is  very  important  that  we  do  not  forget  that  we 
are  apt  to  become  deeply  interested  in  the  thing  to 
which  we  attend.  This  is  true  of  evil  as  well  as  good 
things,  and  is  of  prime  significance  in  the  field  of 
morals. 

There  has  been  a  tendency  of  late  toward  a  "soft*' 
pedagogy.  The  cry  is,  "Find  out  what  the  child 
Hkes  and  let  him  have  it  "  —  "  The  child  knows  better 
what  he  wants  and  needs  than  do  the  parents  and 


Interest  and  Attention  87 

teachers" — ''Discover  the  child's  appetite  and  the] 
feed  it."  We  seem  to  have  forgotten  that  the  very- 
life  of  the  child  for  the  first  years  is  conditioned  by  his 
inability  to  have  everything  for  which  he  cries;  that 
although  the  child  knows  best  what  he  wants,  he  does 
not  know  his  need  so  well  as  the  wise  parent  —  and 
it  is  a  cheap  and  reckless  thing  to  say  that  he  does. 
Any  one  with  mother  wit  knows  it  isn't  so.  And 
we  forget  that  not  only  does  the  appetite  determine 
what  the  food  should  be,  but  the  food  determines 
very  largely  what  the  appetite  will  be. 

The  doctrine  of  spontaneity,  of  following  out  the 
natural  interest  of  the  pupil,  should  play  an  impor- 
tant rdle  in  all  phases  of  education,  but  it  should  have 
most  exclusive  sway  during  the  first  seven  or  eight 
years  of  Kfe.  This  is  the  time  when  weaknesses  due 
to  heredity  are  most  apt  to  crop  out  as  a  result  of 
overwork,  under-nutrition,  and  misdirection.  It  is 
a  time  when  voluntary  attention  is  at  a  minimum, 
when  the  muscular  and  nervous  systems  are  very  un- 
stable. The  life  capital  and  conditions  are  such  that 
it  would  seem  a  mistake  to  try  to  induce,  and  especially 
to  force,  interest  through  attention  to  what,  at  first,  is 
comparatively  uninteresting. 

Neurologists  tell  us  that  from  about  nine  till  about 


88  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

twelve  the  nervous  system  is  comparatively  stable  and 
is  much  more  exempt  from  hereditary  diseases.  We 
know  also  that  the  muscular  system  is  capable  of  func- 
tioning pretty  accurately;  that  the  liability  to  fatigue, 
due  to  unproportionate  development  of  the  vascular 
and  muscular  systems,  is  not  so  great  as  heretofore; 
and  that  children  are  more  free  from  disease  and 
death  at  this  time  than  they  have  ever  been  before  or 
will  ever  be  again,  the  girls  reaching  their  minimum 
susceptibility  at  eleven  and  the  boys  at  twelve.  This 
is  the  best  time  in  the  life  of  the  individual  for  drill 
work,  for  mastering  the  fundamentals,  whether  they 
are  intrinsically  interesting  or  not.  As  far  as  possible, 
work  on  these  more  or  less  uninteresting,  but  funda- 
mental things  should  be  associated  with  things  that 
are  interesting. 

The  observations  of  child  hfe  as  now  known  seem  to 
warrant  the  statement  that  until  about  eight  years  of 
age, — the  time  varies  with  individuals, — within  the  hm- 
its  of  right,  the  child's  spontaneity  should  be  unbridled 
and  his  natural  interests  gratified  regardless  of  the 
amount  of  information  he  may  get.  This  is  no  time 
to  force  attention,  and  the  psychological  truth  that 
the  teacher  should  keep  uppermost  in  mind  is  that 
children  attend  to  those  things  which  have  a  natural 


Interest  and  Attention  89 

interest  for  them.  On  the  other  hand,  while  we  should 
never  ignore  the  dependence  of  interest  upon  attention, 
the  constitution  of  the  world  is  such  that  the  child  will 
have  to  attend  to  many  things  that  are  not  intrinsically 
interesting,  and  the  child  from  about  nine  to  twelve 
is  such  that  he  can  be  trained  into  the  habit  of  doing 
this  with  but  little  risk  of  damage.  Our  pedagogy 
will  be  less  soft  and  much  more  effective  if  we  bear  in 
mind  at  this  stage  that  the  child  is  apt  to  become  perma- 
nently interested  in  whatever  he  attends  to.  The  three 
or  four  years  preceding  pubescence  should  be  pre- 
eminently years  of  hard  work,  drill,  repetition,  and, 
if  need  be,  drudgery,  but  let  the  work  be  as  interesting 
as  is  consistent  with  these  things. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE  SIGNIFICANCE  OF  THE  RECITATION 

Every  phase  of  school  work  should  contribute 
its  share  to  the  sum  total  of  training  and  scholarship 
which  the  child  is  to  derive  from  the  school.  In  this 
sense  one  phase  of  work  is  just  as  important  as  any 
other.  Among  a  number  of  things,  all  of  which  are 
necessary  to  a  complete  process  and  a  desired  result, 
it  is  not  easy  to  say  that  such  and  such  are  of  first 
importance,  and  others  of  secondary  importance. 
Nevertheless,  certain  stages  in  a  process  are  often 
pivotal.  All  that  have  gone  before  are  of  value  only 
as  they  lead  up  to  these  stages,  and  the  result  sought 
is  the  direct  and  often  the  immediate  outgrowth  of 
them. 

In  all  the  varied  and  complex  work  of  the  school, 
the  recitation  is  the  pivot,  or  hinge;  it  is  the  center  of 
the  educational  process.  It  is  the  educational  arena. 
In  the  recitation  the  battle  is  lost  or  won.  Success 
here  almost  invariably  means  a  good  school.  Failure 
here  means  failure  all  along  the  line,     A  good  recita- 

90 


The  Significance  of  the  Recitation         91 

tion  is  characterized  by  the  birth  of  ideas,  by  con- 
secutive thought,  by  great  tension  between  the  pupil's 
mind  and  the  subject  under  consideration. 

The  teacher's  purpose  must  not  be  merely  to  hear 
the  children  say  over  some  things  they  may  have 
gotten  from  books,  but  he  must  look  upon  the  recita- 
tion as  the  chance  of  his  hfe  as  a  teacher,  and  as  the 
chance  of  the  child's  hfe  in  its  development.  The 
lines  must  be  drawn  tight;  the  electric  spark  must 
fly,  and  the  child's  life  must  be  quickened.  All  things 
must  be  conducive  to  this  end.  The  excuse  for  a 
large  part  of  school  organization  and  school  manage- 
ment is  that  they  contribute  to  the  recitation.  The 
presuppositions  of  a  good  recitation  are  many  and 
are  important  on  their  own  account,  but  find  their 
highest  significance  in  serving  as  means  rather  than 
as  ends  in  themselves. 

A  teacher  may  be  cranky  on  punctuah'ty  and  regu- 
larity if  he  insists  upon  these  things  for  their  own  sake, 
but  when  he  sees  their  bearing  upon  hfe  and  upon 
the  school  process  as  a  whole,  he  is  working  for  the 
best  good.  Viewed  from  this  standpoint,  punctuahty 
and  regularity  must  be  insisted  upon.  Anything  short 
of  attendance  every  day,  at  the  hour  set,  must  not  be 
tolerated.    This  is  absolutely  essential  for  the  strong, 


92  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

effective  mental  pull  that  characterizes  the  good  recita- 
tion. As  soon  as  the  teacher  diverts  his  attention, 
time,  and  energy  from  the  students  who  are  making 
this  mental  pull  in  order  that  he  may  serve  as  scajffold- 
ing  or  crutches  for  some  student  who  has  been  tardy 
or  absent,  just  so  soon  the  recitation  loses  in  effec- 
tiveness; and  the  damage  that  comes  to  the  other 
members  of  the  class  —  of  which  they  and  the  teacher 
are  often  unaware  —  can  hardly  be  estimated.  In- 
sistence upon  punctuality  and  regularity  is  justified 
upon  many  grounds,  chief  among  them  being  that 
failure  in  either  makes  for  havoc  in  the  recitation  and 
so  defeats  the  purpose  of  the  school. 

The  teacher  who  is  thus  conscious  of  the  relative 
significance  of  the  recitation  will  endeavor  to  plan  his 
work  to  make  the  most  of  this  opportunity.  He  will 
see  that  it  is  imperative  to  make  all  assignments  for 
study  perfectly  clear  and  definite,  and  of  such  a  nature 
that  the  weakest  in  the  class  can  accompHsh  definite 
results,  that  the  strongest  can  employ  beneficially  all 
the  time  at  their  disposal,  and  that  all  are  not  only 
requested  but  required  to  prepare  the  work  assigned. 
Such  preparation  on  the  part  of  the  class,  together 
with  reasonable  daily  preparation  by  the  teacher  and 
fair   skill   in   questioning   and   leadership,    will   result 


The  Significance  of  the  Recitation         93 

invariably  in  good  recitations.  But  such  preparation 
by  the  class  means  that  the  time  set  aside  for  this 
work  has  been  profitably  employed,  which  carries 
with  it  axiomatically  the  other  important  fact  that  the 
children  have  not  been  idhng  their  time  away  or  wast- 
ing it  in  pursuit  of  mischief. 

This  is  the  kernel  of  School  Management,  a  thing 
never  to  be  considered  as  an  end  in  itself.  It  is  a  mis- 
taken notion  that  the  teacher  manages  the  school  and 
so  brings  about  the  conditions  necessary  for  good  work. 
Not  so  at  all.  School  management  and  school  teach- 
ing are  dialectical.  They  go  hand  in  hand.  They 
dovetail  into  each  other.  We  manage  the  school 
while  we  teach  and  through  our  teaching;  and  at  the 
same  time  teaching  is  effective  in  proportion  as  the 
school  is  wisely  organized  and  judiciously  managed. 
There  is  no  one  thing  the  teacher  can  do  that  will 
make  for  order,  industry,  and  system  in  the  school  so 
much  as  an  insistence  upon  definite,  careful,  and  com- 
plete preparation  of  the  work  assigned  for  recitation. 
The  good  recitation  is  the  one  thing  to  which,  if  it 
is  sought  and  attained,  all  these  other  things  shall 
be  added. 

Unified  attention  on  the  part  of  the  pupil  and  the 
class  is  a  prime  essential  of  the  recitation.    The  dis- 


94  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

tracting  stimuli  must  be  reduced  to  a  minimum.  All 
materials  which  do  not  have  a  bearing  upon  the  work 
in  hand  should  be  put  away.  The  child  is  not  apt 
to  hold  to  a  development  for  any  length  of  time  if  a 
dozen  things  of  more  intrinsic  interest  are  appealing 
to  him.  The  teacher  is  infinitely  more  at  fault  than 
the  child  when  he  demands  attention  and  fails  to  se- 
cure it,  if  the  material  conditions,  at  least,  are  not  all 
favorable  to  such  attention.  As  well  give  it  up  in  the 
start  as  in  the  finish,  if  the  child  does  not  have  a  desk 
that  fits  him  —  if  it  is  too  high  or  too  low  or  improperly 
shaped;  if  he  has  candy  or  fruit  or  irrelevant  pictures 
and  books  on  his  desk ;  if  there  is  unnecessary  noise  or 
moving  about  the  room;  if  the  teacher  is  loud  and 
boisterous  or  dramatic,  and  so  detracts  attention  from 
the  work  to  himself.  This  is  the  unpardonable  sin  in 
school  teaching.  Happily  it  is  not  the  most  universal 
one. 

In  this  endeavor  to  make  aU  things  focus  in  the 
good  recitation,  the  superintendent  or  principal  finds 
a  large  share  of  his  mission.  A  student  who  is  a  few 
minutes  tardy  seeks  an  excuse  from  the  principal  which 
will  entitle  him  to  join  his  class.  Here  is  a  golden  op- 
portunity for  the  principal  to  bring  home  to  the  pupil 
the  importance  of  promptness  in  all  things,  while  at 


The  Significance  of  the  Recitation         95 

the  same  time  it  gives  him  a  chance  to  reenforce  and 
encourage  the  teacher.  But  what  will  be  done  in  this 
case?  No  one  knows.  In  a  large  majority  of  such 
cases  simple  justice  to  all  concerned,  as  well  as  the 
highest  pedagogical  consideration,  demands  that  the 
pupil  be  not  admitted  to  his  class  until  the  close  of 
that  recitation,  and  that  unaided  he  be  held  respon- 
sible for  the  work  he  has  missed.  The  class  and  the 
teacher  are  thus  protected  and  the  child  has  had  one 
of  the  most  important  lessons  of  hfe  impressed  upon 
him. 

Nothing  must  be  done  or  tolerated  by  the  principal 
which  will  in  the  least  interfere  with  the  strong  mental 
pull  which  the  class  is  making  under  the  stimulus 
and  guidance  of  the  teacher.  Many  principals  are 
too  apt  to  carry  things  with  a  high  hand,  to  exercise 
the  right  of  interference  anywhere  at  any  time.  This 
is  always  a  violation  of  the  highest  interest  of  the 
school.  A  principal,  when  he  could  just  as  well  wait 
till  the  close  of  the  recitation,  steps  in  to  consult  the 
teacher,  breaks  the  continuity  of  thought,  sends  the 
children  in  a  dozen  different  ways,  and  unwittingly 
undermines  the  whole  teaching  process;  or  he  mixes 
a  shallow  sense  of  courtesy  with  a  shallow  sense  of 
pedagogy,   and  thinks  that  in  showing  visitors  into 


96  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

the  different  classes  he  must  introduce  them  to  the 
teachers.  Such  things  are  always  fatal  and  show  that 
the  principal  has  not  grasped  the  significance  of  the 
recitation.  Nothing  must  interfere  with  it.  It  is  the 
outcome,  the  fruitage  of  all  things  else.  It  is  second- 
ary to  nothing.  For  it  all  other  things  must  wait. 
The  inviolable  rule  which  the  principal  must  observe 
himself  and  insist  upon  others  observing  is  that  the 
continuity  of  the  recitation  must  never  be  violated 
except  in  the  most  extreme  cases,  such  as  convulsions, 
fire,  or  earthquakes.  Let  the  principal  consult  his 
teachers  at  teachers'  meetings,  at  the  beginning  or 
close  of  sessions,  between  recitations  or  at  vacant 
periods  for  the  teacher,  and  let  it  be  a  settled  con- 
viction with  him  that  only  in  the  most  extreme  cases 
will  he  do  so  while  the  recitation  is  in  progress.  Vis- 
itors should  always  be  welcome,  but  let  them  enter  the 
room  at  the  beginning  of  the  recitation  or  wait  till 
its  close,  or,  if  time  will  not  permit  this,  let  them  step 
in  during  the  recitation  and  quietly  observe  the  work 
without  further  ceremony. 

The  good  teacher  will  see  that  in  the  recitation 
there  must  be  no  side-tracking,  there  must  be  nothing 
irrelevant  to  the  subject.  All  illustrations  must  re- 
enforce  the  work  in  hand.     Nothing  extraneous  must 


The  Significance  of  the  Recitation         97 

be  admitted  on  its  own  account.  I  have  in  mind  now 
a  teacher  of  algebra  who  would  at  the  beginning 
of  the  recitation,  with  the  avowed  purpose  of  arous- 
ing interest,  tell  the  class  about  something  she  had 
seen  in  her  summer  trip  abroad.  She  declared  that 
she  never  failed  to  arouse  intense  interest.  Doubtless 
she  never  failed,  but  she  aroused  interest  in  what? 
Surely  not  in  algebra.  The  longer  and  better  the 
story,  the  farther  she  led  her  class  away  from  algebra 
and  the  greater  the  difficulty  in  reclaiming  them  and 
getting  them  back  to  the  subject.  The  teacher  must 
be  interested  in  the  thing  she  teaches  and  able  to 
interest  her  pupils  in  it,  else  she  is  a  failure.  The 
teacher's  manner,  her  attitude  toward  her  pupils  and 
her  work,  her  questions  and  answers,  must  all  be  con- 
ducive to  consecutive,  productive  mental  work  on  the 
part  of  the  class. 

This  kind  of  recitation  work,  together  with  the 
multitude  of  things  which  it  presupposes,  will  have 
the  most  far-reaching  and  desirable  results.  It  is 
recognized  everywhere  that  much  of  the  information 
gotten  in  the  schools  can  in  after  years  be  turned  to 
little  practical  use,  and  that  the  chief  benefits  derived 
from  the  school  are  mental  discipline,  habits  of  work, 
wholesome  and  intelligent  attitudes  toward  people  and 


98  The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

affairs,  and  an  ability  to  evaluate.  The  good  recita- 
tion with  its  necessary  presuppositions  cannot  fail  to 
result  in  just  these  things.  For  a  number  of  years 
the  child  has  had  definite  work  assigned  commensu- 
rate to  his  attainments  and  has  been  required  to  take 
hold  of  it  in  a  definite,  methodical  manner,  and  has 
gotten  definite  results,  not  only  in  the  subject  under 
consideration,  but  more  especially  in  himself.  Here, 
as  nowhere  else,  is  the  teacher's  opportunity  to  in- 
culcate the  habits  of  industry,  concentration,  accu- 
racy, completeness,  punctuality,  and  regularity  which 
count  for  so  much  in  the  child's  after  years,  for  hap- 
piness and  success,  and  his  efficiency  and  desirability 
as  a  social  factor. 

The  recitation,  if  correctly  viewed  as  the  center  of 
the  school,  and  successfully  managed  as  such,  must  re- 
sult in  a  high  degree  of  capabiHty  and  trustworthiness 
in  the  child,  which  is  the  crowning  glory  of  all  edu- 
cational work. 


CHAPTER  XI 

ON  RELATING   WORK 

Certain  questions  on  which  teachers  are  at  vari- 
ance are :  To  what  extent  should  the  reason  be  given  ? 
Should  we  speculate  and  philosophize  much  or  little? 
Or,  should  we  give  the  child  the  thing  practically 
cold  and  naked  and  let  him  make  out  of  it  what  he 
can? 

One  teacher  with  a  class  of  children  will  try  to  ex- 
plain the  reason  for  writing  down  the  right-hand  figure 
and  carrying  the  other  in  a  problem  in  addition,  and 
is  considered  a  thorough  teacher;  while  another  who 
teaches  the  children  to  write  down  the  right-hand 
figure  and  carry  the  other,  without  a  word  of  explana- 
tion as  to  the  reason  for  so  doing,  is  denounced  as 
"sHpshod."  This  *' slipshod"  teacher  works  with  the 
thought  that  he  is  conferring  upon  his  children  skill 
in  manipulating  figures,  accuracy  in  processes,  and  a 
knowledge  of  means  to  an  end ;  they  will,  he  thinks, 
naturally  and  with  little  difficulty  "see  through  it." 
And  he  denounces  his  reasoning  pedagogical   brethren 

99 


loo        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

as  hair-splitters  —  teachers  of  dialectics,  perhaps,  but 
not  of  mathematics. 

I  know  a  man  who  consumed  the  greater  portion 
of  a  recitation  period  trying  to  explain  the  reason  for 
the  nose  being  located  as  it  is.  It  was  shown  why 
this  place  or  that  would  not  be  a  good  one.  A  half- 
dozen  different  parts  of  the  body  were  considered. 
For  example,  many  reasons  were  produced  why  it 
would  have  been  a  mistake  to  have  placed  the  nose 
between  the  shoulders;  and  many  reasons  were 
brought  out  why  the  nose  should  be  in  close  proximity 
to  the  mouth,  and  many  other  reasons  why  it  should 
be  above  rather  than  below  the  mouth.  Well,  that 
was  interesting  to  me.  The  children  were  interested, 
and  were  skirmishing  about  to  find  out  why.  The 
order  was  good,  the  children  were  responsive.  When 
they  said  this  or  that,  it  was  true.  The  work  was 
more  or  less  logical,  and  no  mistakes  were  made  in 
it,  except  the  great  mistake  —  the  mistake  of  doing 
such  work  at  all.  But  the  matter-of-fact  teacher 
errs  in  the  opposite  extreme.  He  says,  every  child 
knows  where  the  nose  is,  and,  furthermore,  he  knows 
that  to  remove  it  to  any  other  part  of  the  body  would 
be  a  violent  stroke  at  beauty  and  utiHty,  and  in  abso- 
lute scorn  of  this  "reasoning  out"  work,  passes  the 


On  Relating  Work  loi 

I 

subject  by  without  even  hinting  at  the  mutual  re- 
enforcement  of  the  senses  of  smell  and  taste. 

A  certain  institute  instructor  gave  a  whole  day  to 
the  discussion  of  the  best  method  of  presenting  to 
the  child  the  number  two  in  all  of  its  relations.  She 
was  an  earnest  and  more  or  less  helpful  instructor, 
anxious  to  do  what  would  be  best,  and  she  said  to  a 
fellow-teacher,  "What  do  you  think  of  the  work  I  did 
to-day?"  What  he  answered  was  in  substance  this: 
"  Perhaps  everything  you  said  was  true,  in  fact  I  think 
it  was,  but  it  was  useless.  I  should  think  that  a  child 
who  had  to  be  taught  that  way  had  as  well  never  go 
to  school.  Any  sane  child  six  years  old  knows  those 
things  about  the  number  two  before  he  enters  school.  *' 

In  these  cases,  is  one  person  right  and  the  other 
wrong?  Are  both  right  or  both  wrong?  May  I 
suggest  what  would  be  a  good  thing  for  teachers  to 
do?  Take  up  each  one  of  these  cases  and  try  to 
decide  for  yourselves  wherein  each  person  was  wise 
and  wherein  unwise.  It  is  one  of  the  best  things 
you  can  do,  even  if  you  do  not  get  the  answer.  To 
take  up  fact  after  fact  in  an  isolated,  unrelated  way 
in  any  line  of  investigation  is  surely  not  good  peda- 
gogy; and  to  try  to  reduce  everything  to  its  primal 
cause  and  speculate  as  to  its  ultimate  outcome  is 


I02        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

surely  in  most  cases  impossible  —  if  not  really  un- 
wise if  it  were  possible.  To  know  how  far  back  to 
go  in  the  study  of  events  introductory  to  the  American 
Revolution  is  not  easy.  It  would  seem  that  some 
steps  preliminary  to  Lexington  and  Concord  should 
be  noted.  But  it  would  seem  extravagant  to  require 
a  preparation  on  the  Roman  State,  Laws,  and  Con- 
stitution; yet  for  the  special  advanced  student  this 
might  be  a  reasonable  requirement. 

Through  the  remainder  of  this  chapter  we  shall 
follow  out  one  Hne  of  thought  illustrating  the  point 
which  has  in  a  general  way  been  hinted  at  —  the 
interdependence  of  things,  the  reason  of  one  fact  in 
another.  We  shall  show  this  by  looking  at  history 
in  its  relation  to  geography.  And  if  what  is  said  in 
this  one  line  is  helpful,  let  the  teachers  transfer  the 
general  thought  to  other  Hnes  and  adapt  it  as  they 
may  be  able  to  do  so,  remembering  that,  after  all 
has  been  said,  it  will  be  of  help  only  by  way  of  sug- 
gestion and  warning.  Who  needs  more  than  this 
will  be  helped  but  Httle. 

A  student  asked  his  teacher :  "  Why  were  the 
Phoenicians  a  sea-faring  people  and  the  Egyptians  a 
sea-fearing  people?  Both  were  near  the  sea.  They 
had  practically  the  same  kind  of  climate  and  were 


On  Relating  Work  103 

more  or  less  akin."  The  teacher  said,  "Well,  there 
are  some  things  —  in  fact,  a  great  many  things  —  that 
can't  be  explained;  the  fact  is  that  the  Phoenicians 
were  a  sea-faring  and  the  Egyptians  a  sea-fearing 
people,  and  that's  all  there  is  about  it."  Doubtless 
that  was  ''all  there  was  about  it"  as  far  as  that  teacher 
was  concerned,  but  that  boy  didn't  think  so,  and  he 
left  the  recitation  dissatisfied  if  not  thoroughly  dis- 
gusted. Think  of  requiring  a  student  to  accept  such 
skeletons  as  history ! 

If  the  teacher  had  applied  a  limited  amount  of 
geographical  knowledge  and  just  a  little  more  his- 
torical knowledge,  he  could  have  shown  that  the 
Phoenicians  Hved  in  a  narrow  country  between  the 
sea  on  the  west  and  the  mountains  on  the  east,  beyond 
which  were  strong  barbaric  and  semi-barbaric  peo- 
ples who  were  continually  pushing  over  the  moun- 
tains and  crowding  down  upon  the  people  below 
and  driving  them  out;  that  the  country  itself  was 
small  and  with  difficulty  could  support  an  ever  in- 
creasing population.  The  Phoenicians  could  take  their 
choice  and  go  over  the  mountains  and  against  the 
peoples  to  the  east  of  them,  or  they  could  go  against 
the  sea  to  the  west  of  them.  For  the  most  part 
they   chose  the  latter  alternative,   and  thus  through 


I04        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

the  force  of  necessity  they  came  to  be  a  sea-faring 
nation. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Egyptians  Hved  in  a  broad 
and  fertile  country.  With  a  reasonable  amount  of 
effort  they  could  hve  at  home.  Behind  them  there 
was  no  such  powerful  and  aggressive  nation  as  there 
was  behind  the  Phoenicians.  The  reasons  that  sent 
the  Phoenicians  to  sea  were  not  present  with  the 
Egyptians  with  so  much  force.  And,  on  the  other 
hand,  for  the  Egyptians  to  take  to  the  sea  meant  now 
competition  not  only  with  the  sea,  but  also  with  the 
Phoenicians.  They  took  their  choice,  and  stayed  at 
home.  Through  the  force  of  circumstances  the  Egyp- 
tians thus  came  to  be  a  sea-fearing  people.  With 
proper  direction  the  class  could  have  worked  this 
out  better  than  I  have  given  it  (I  have  seen  it  done 
more  than  once);  they  would  have  gained  something, 
and  would  have  been  satisfied  with  it. 

The  average  student  will  find  a  perfunctory  study 
of  Grecian  history  from  the  text  a  monotonous  thing. 
But  if  the  teacher  will  make  the  story  real  and  reason- 
able, it  will  not  be  monotonous.  Why  was  Greece, 
with  an  area  less  than  half  that  of  the  state  of 
Indiana,  divided  into  twenty-four  states?  The  stu- 
dent reads  in  his  geography  that  Indiana  is  the  smallest 


On  Relating  Work  105 

of  the  North  Central  states,  and  now  he  finds  a  coun- 
try only  half  as  large  as  this  state  organized  into 
twenty-four  states.  It  strikes  him  as  a  strange  thing. 
A  little  geographical  work  will  make  the  mystery 
clear.  When  his  attention  is  directed  to  the  map 
and  a  contour  and  rehef  description  of  this  little  coun- 
try is  given  him;  when  he  sees  that  the  country  is  cut 
to  pieces  by  mountains  running  in  every  direction,  by 
inlets,  gulfs,  and  bays,  that  each  httle  section  is  more 
or  less  isolated,  and  that  communication  from  one  to 
another  is  carried  on  with  somewhat  of  difficulty,  he 
will  see  some  reason  for  local  government,  and  the 
organization  of  many  separate  states.  Then  the 
jealousies  and  strifes  which  would  naturally  follow 
such  a  condition  of  afifairs  will  open  up  the  way  to  an 
understanding  of  the  many  domestic  wars.  The  his- 
tory of  Greece  simply  cannot  be  gotten  without  its 
geographical  setting,  and  this  characteristic  it  has 
in  common  with  every  other  country. 

The  influence  of  geography  upon  the  historical  in- 
stitutions can  be  shown  in  no  more  effective  way  than 
by  a  comparison  of  these  institutions  in  the  three 
geographical  zones.  It  is  poor  history  and  poor 
geography  to  teach  the  child  simply  that  institutional 
life  is  found  in  higher  and  more  fully  developed  forn^s 


io6        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

in  the  temperate  than  in  the  torrid  and  frigid  zones. 
There  must  be  some  reason  for  this,  and  any  child 
who  is  ready  for  the  fact  at  all  can  easily  comprehend 
the  reason.  He  knows  this  —  that  children  are  lazy 
in  warm  weather;  and  he  also  knows  that  as  a  rule 
they  don't  work  unless  they  have  to.  (He  may  know 
that  this  isn't  Hmited  to  children.)  He  knows  that  the 
climate  in  the  torrid  zone  is  very  warm,  and  he  knows 
that  in  many  parts  of  this  zone  there  is  excessive  rain- 
fall, and  that  a  great  variety  of  food  stuflf  grows  in 
great  abundance.  On  the  one  hand,  the  people  will 
be  apt  to  be  somewhat  lazy,  sluggish,  and  ignorant; 
on  the  other  hand,  they  will  be  compelled  to  energize 
but  little,  for  food  is  prepared  by  nature,  and  of  cloth- 
ing and  shelter  they  need  Httle.  All  the  conditions 
necessary  for  the  development  of  strong  institutions 
are  wanting,  and  we  find  just  what  would  naturally  be 
expected. 

Then,  what  about  the  frigid  zone  ?  The  child  knows 
many  things  which  will  help  him  in  working  out  the 
explanation.  He  knows  that  in  winter  the  range  of 
productive  activities  is  limited;  that  plants  do  not 
grow  as  in  the  summer  and  that  fishing  is  next  to  im- 
possible. He  furthermore  knows  that  income  is  one  of 
the  strongest  incentives  to  work.    When  he  learns  that 


On  Relating  Work  107 

the  frigid  zone  has  practically  a  long  and  continuous 
winter  with  a  very  narrow  and  circumscribed  range  of 
possible  activities;  that,  however  much  or  little  one 
may  energize,  one  gets  just  about  so  much  out  of  it, 
the  mystery  of  low  institutional  forms  and  life  will  no 
longer  exist  for  him.  In  the  temperate  zone  he  finds 
a  variety  of  cHmate,  a  variety  of  soils,  and  every  con- 
dition present  to  encourage  industry,  thought,  and 
enterprise.  Food,  clothing,  shelter,  and  the  luxuries 
of  life  cannot  be  had  for  the  mere  asking  as  in  the 
torrid  zone.  Neither  does  one  ask  and  strive  in  vain 
for  these  as  in  the  frigid  zone.  The  peculiar  natural 
condition  in  the  temperate  zone  is  that  every  one  must 
work  for  what  he  gets  and  that  he  gets  what  he  works 
for.  He  has  to  work,  but  he  is  paid  for  it.  Work  is 
the  developer  and  pay  is  the  incentive;  this  is  shown 
in  the  advancement  made  in  every  form  of  institutional 
Ufe. 

Let  us  consider  another  illustration  in  the  same  hne. 
Take  the  institution  of  slavery  in  the  United  States  and 
its  result  —  the  Civil  War.  The  history  I  studied  in 
the  common  schools  gave  no  hint  that  there  was  any 
geographical  reason  for  this  institution's  existing  as  it 
did  and  where  it  did.  It  is  not  to  my  credit,  but  it  is 
true,  that  not  until  after  I  had  served  a  term  as  a 


io8        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

teacher  did  I  know  that  slaves  were  ever  held  in  the 
New  England  states,  and  then  it  was  much  longer  be- 
fore I  knew  the  reason  why  the  institution  did  not 
prosper  there  as  in  the  South.  I  simply  divided  the 
country  into  two  parts  —  in  one  lived  the  good  people 
who  had  no  slaves,  and  in  the  other  Hved  the 
mean  people  who  owned  slaves.  And  finally  they 
became  so  very  mean  that  the  good  people  had  to 
punish  them  and  set  the  slaves  free.  But  why  should 
all  the  good  people  happen  to  live  in  one  place  and  all 
the  mean  ones  in  another?  That  question  did  not 
present  itself.  If  my  attention  had  been  called  to  the 
geography  of  the  situation  and  the  teacher  had  given 
some  skillful  direction  in  relating  it  to  my  history 
work,  I  could  have  gotten  from  it  something  of  real 
historical  value  as  well  as  geographical  value.  As  it 
was,  I  got  next  to  nothing,  and  that  was  wrong.  Some 
one  has  said,  "It  is  better  to  know  a  little  less  than  to 
know  so  much  that  isn't  right."  I  have  since  known 
children  to  work  it  out  in  this  way :  The  New  England 
states  are  rugged  and  mountainous.  The  cHmate  is 
cold.  Extensive  agriculture  is  impossible,  especially 
the  plantation  system;  tobacco,  rice,  and  cotton,  the 
products  of  the  plantation,  will  not  grow  here.  But 
in  these  states  building  material  for  the  construction 


On  Relating  Work  109 

of  manufactories  is  plentiful.  The  rivers  are  short  and 
rapid  and  capable  of  running  immense  machinery. 
Ov/ing  to  the  natural  conditions,  manufacturing  be- 
came the  chief  industry  of  this  section.  But  manu- 
facturing means  handhng  machinery;  this  means 
skilled  labor.  This  was  death  to  slavery,  for  slave 
labor  was  unskilled,  and  only  with  great  expense 
could  it  be  made  otherwise.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  conditions  in  the  South  for  plantation  life  were 
excellent  —  tobacco,  rice,  and  cotton  could  be  culti- 
vated with  great  profit  to  the  planter.  The  chief  need 
was  rice,  cotton,  and  tobacco  pickers  and  "clod-hop- 
pers." This  work  demands  no  skill;  muscle  and  en- 
durance are  the  chief  requirements.  These  the  slave 
had.  Slavery  was  a  paying  institution,  and  it  was 
fostered;  and  the  geographical  conditions  were  the 
chief  factors  that  determined  that  here  it  should  be  a 
paying  institution,  while  in  the  New  England  states  it 
could  not  possibly  be  profitable. 

History  and  geography  are  thus  mutually  inter- 
dependent from  beginning  to  finish.  Almost  every 
boundary  of  every  modern  state  given  in  our  school 
geographies  has  an  historical  significance,  to  say  noth- 
ing of  names  and  locations  of  cities,  and  numberless 
other  details.    History  is  bare,  meaningless,  and  bur- 


no        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

densome  without  its  geographical  setting.  Any  good 
teacher  knows  enough  of  both  of  these  branches  to  do 
work  of  this  kind,  if  he  would  be  careful  to  work  out 
the  relations.  The  relationship  between  history  and 
geography  may  be  somewhat  more  obvious  than  that 
between  other  lines  of  work,  but  it  is  not  more  real. 
The  teacher  should  be  careful  to  give  proper  em- 
phasis to  such  relationships. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE  STIMULUS   OF  SUCCESS 

One  of  the  problems  that  is  ripe  for  the  student  of 
psychology  and  of  great  importance  to  teachers  is  the 
Psychology  of  Success  with  pedagogical  and  social  ap- 
plications. No  one  at  present  has  given  this  subject 
the  attention  and  careful  study  which  it  merits,  and 
yet  on  the  surface  there  is  hardly  a  question  in  the 
field  of  psychology,  pedagogy,  or  sociology  that  prom- 
ises more.  In  general  we  believe  that  what  anything 
can  do  or  become  depends  more  or  less  upon  what  it 
has  been  doing,  and  so  we  beheve  that  one's  ability  to 
accomphsh  certain  tasks  depends  somewhat  upon 
the  ability  he  has  gained  in  performing  this  or  similar 
tasks.  We  predict  a  man's  future  by  his  past,  both 
in  general  and  in  particular.  After  all  else  is  said,  one 
of  the  great  differences  among  men  is  a  difference  in 
ability  to  do  things  —  to  make  things  come  to  pass. 
And  it  is  true  here  that,  other  things  being  equal,  we 
judge  of  a  man's  outlook  in  the  light  of  his  retrospect. 
It  is  not  only  true  that  "nothing  succeeds  like  success," 

III 


112        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

but  it  is  also  true  that  nothing  helps  one  to  succeed  so 
much  as  a  success  already  won.  We  shall  have  taken 
a  long  step  in  advance,  psychologically  and  ethically, 
when  we  see  that  not  what  a  man  needs  to  do,  but 
rather  what  he  feels  from  former  experience  he  can 
do,  is  the  thing  he  will  accompHsh.  Not  necessity, 
but  faith  in  his  ability,  is  what  sets  a  man  to  his  task 
and  keeps  him  at  it. 

In  the  absence  of  strictly  scientific  data  our  dis- 
cussion must  be  based  upon  common  observation,  but 
it  is  hoped  that  the  appHcations  to  be  made  will  not 
suffer  greatly  for  this  reason.  Every  teacher  has 
noticed  with  what  enthusiasm  and  vigor  children  take 
up  difficult  tasks  in  arithmetic  after  they  have  been 
successful  in  the  solution  of  some  very  difficult,  knotty 
problem.  Not  all  the  coaxing,  or  scolding,  or  moraliz- 
ing in  the  world  would  fit  them  half  so  well  to  take  up 
the  new  work,  as  the  victory  already  won.  Whoever 
has  attended  country  spelling  matches,  which  were  so 
widely  in  vogue  until  recent  years,  knows  what  effect 
for  future  contests  a  single  victory  had  upon  the  cham- 
pion and  the  entire  school  of  which  he  was  a  member. 
A  study  of  college  oratory  and  the  development  of  col- 
lege orators  would  bring  out  some  very  valuable  data. 
The  professor  of  oratory  often  finds  it  difficult  to  keep 


The  Stimulus  of  Success  113 

the  squad  of  orators  from  becoming  "dead,"  so  to 
speak,  before  the  primary,  and  progress  seems  to  be 
very  slow.  But  after  the  primary  it  is  often  surpris- 
ing to  note  the  remarkable  development  of  the  suc- 
cessful candidate.  No  doubt  the  psychology  of  the 
expert,^  as  worked  out  by  President  W.  L.  Bryan  and 
Superintendent  Noble  Harter,  would  play  an  impor- 
tant role  here;  but  inasmuch  as  the  lift-up  usually 
comes  directly  after  the  first  success,  it  would  seem 
that  the  success  is  an  important  factor;  and  so  the 
college  that  has  been  winning  continues  to  win.  Not 
the  wish  to  win,  so  much  as  the  behef  that  victory 
is  certain,  does  the  work.  The  former,  without  the 
latter  in  good  measure,  rather  inhibits  than  reenforces. 
Any  one  who  is  acquainted  with  high  school  or  college 
athletics  knows  how  important  success  at  the  begin- 
ning is,  and  how  depressing  is  a  series  of  failures. 
The  social  effect  in  all  of  these  things  is  a  very  large 
factor.  The  former  champion  takes  up  his  new  task 
with  greater  confidence  in  himself,  and  he  inspires  his 
followers  with  confidence;  while  on  the  other  hand, 
his  opponents  view  him  as  a  more  formidable  adver- 
sary, and  in  comparing  themselves  with  their  task  are 
not  so  large  or  so  sure  as  they  were  before  the  success 

1  Psychological  Review^  July,  1899, 


114        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

of  their  rival.  His  success  has  enlarged  him  and  his 
followers,  and  reduced  the  opponents. 

The  same  effect  is  seen  both  psychologically  and 
sociologically  in  the  case  of  success  in  business.  Not 
only  does  the  business  man  who  has  achieved  success 
take  up  new  enterprises  with  more  vigor  and  a  higher 
degree  of  assurance,  but  the  entire  community  be- 
lieves in  him,  and  so  he  is  doubly  reenforced  for  the 
undertaking. 

But  the  great  help  that  success  already  won  gives  to 
an  individual  is  shown  nowhere  to  better  advantage 
than  in  the  field  of  morals  or  will  training  —  in  the 
formation  of  new  habits  of  Hfe,  and  in  breaking  away 
from  old  ones.  Many  young  people  are  kept  from 
doing  wrong  things  and  falling  into  evil  ways  simply 
because  they  have  never  done  so.  One  young  man 
says:  ''I  do  not  keep  from  the  saloon  so  much  from  a 
mere  sense  of  right  and  wrong.  I  do  other  things 
that  are  equally  bad,  but  I  have  Hved  thirty  years 
without  darkening  the  door  of  a  saloon,  and  that  keeps 
me  out.  If  I  were  to  break  down  the  possibihty  of 
saying  that,  I  think  I  should  become  a  regular  visitor 
at  such  places."  The  thirty  years  behind  him,  not 
the  moral  ground  he  has  attained,  is  the  restrain- 
ing power.      And  it  should  be  noted   here   that  the 


The  Stimulus  of  Success  115 

reason  a  man  takes  the  second  drink  more  easily  is 
not,  so  much  as  is  commonly  supposed,  that  he 
has  gotten  a  taste  and,  having  it  in  his  blood, 
cannot  get  away  from  it.  In  a  way  this  is  true, 
and  should  in  itself  be  sufficient  reason  to  keep  one 
from  taking  the  wrong  step.  But  the  chief  reason  is 
this:  Before  this  step  was  taken,  he  was  an  abstainer; 
now  he  is  a  participant,  and  as  such  it  is  infinitely 
easier  to  do  such  things,  even  if  he  bears  the  same 
name,  lives  at  the  same  place,  is  known  by  all  as  the 
same  man,  and  has  only  twenty-four  hours  between 
himself  and  his  former  self.  So  it  goes  in  the  forma- 
tion of  all  our  bad  habits ;  the  redeeming  feature  of 
the  thing  is  that  the  rule  works  equally  well  in  the 
formation  of  good  ones.  If  the  man  who  is  addicted 
to  drink  or  tobacco  could  live  under  conditions  which 
free  him  from  temptation,  and  which  at  the  same 
time  make  it  very  difficult  for  him  to  secure  them 
when  his  appetite  or  system  demands  them;  and  if 
he  would  thus  abstain  for  some  months,  he  would 
have  one  of  the  strongest  braces  possible  for  continued 
abstinence.  It  must  not  be  denied,  however,  that  his 
pecuHarly  good  situation  has  enabled  him  to  wean 
himself  from  these  things  and  set  his  system  to  rights 
again.     I  would  not  ignore  this  point  in  the  least,  but 


1 1 6        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

wish  to  bring  out  at  its  full  value  the  important  part 
that  success  plays.  One  man  who  used  tobacco  until 
he  was  more  than  fifty  and  then  quit,  says:  "I  often 
want  it  just  as  much  as  I  ever  did,  but  I  haven't  tasted 
it  for  five  years  and  I  don't  intend  to  do  so."  One  of 
the  great  things  in  his  favor  is  the  fact  that  he  has 
succeeded  for  five  years. 

Success  seems  to  enlarge  in  every  way  the  man  who 
has  attained  it;  not  only  does  he  instantly  feel  re- 
lieved and  free  from  the  old  task,  but  he  feels  invig- 
orated and  ready  for  a  new  battle;  he  thrills  through 
and  through,  his  eye  flashes,  he  straightens  himself 
up,  and  for  the  time  being  actually  grows  taller.  The 
effect  that  success  has  upon  one  physiologically  is  as 
full  of  interest  and  value  as  its  effect  psychologically. 
The  heart  beat  is  affected,  circulation  is  changed,  the 
function  of  nutrition  and  the  work  of  the  glands,  se- 
cretory and  excretory,  are  accelerated  or  retarded.  It 
would  be  strange  indeed  if  the  physiological  effect  of 
success  were  not  almost,  if  not  quite,  as  marked  as  are 
the  physiological  effects  of  fear,  as  shown  by  Mosso  ^ ; 
but  the  facts  need  to  be  studied  more  fully.  Does 
not  this  enlargement  of  the  self  as  felt  by  the  success- 

1  See  Mosso's  "  Fear,"  published  by  Longmans,  Green  and  Company, 
New  York. 


The  Stimulus  of  Success  117 

ful  man,  and  often  unconsciously  subscribed  to  by 
others,  account  for  the  tendency  on  the  part  of  most 
people  to  regard  the  man  of  knowledge  or  of  wealth 
as  in  some  way  superior?  As  we  think  the  matter 
over,  we  are  apt  to  say  that  the  rich  man  is  no  better 
than  the  poor  man,  and  should  be  esteemed  no  more 
highly  (and  in  many  cases  this  judgment  is  true) ;  but 
in  spite  of  ourselves,  when  we  meet  a  man  who  has 
amassed  a  great  fortune  and  is  known  the  country 
over  as  a  money  king,  we  do  not  feel  that  ease  and 
freedom  which  we  have  when  in  the  company  of  our 
professional  and  financial  equals.  If  not  with  our 
mouths,  we  do  surely  admit  with  our  feeUngs  that,  in 
one  respect  at  least,  this  man  is  our  superior. 

In  these  various  ways  we  see  what  the  psychologic 
effect  is  upon  the  person  who  achieves  success,  and 
what  the  social  effect  is  upon  those  about  him.  The 
principle  appHes  all  the  way  from  the  successful  child 
in  the  primary  school  up  to  the  great  naval  officer  in 
his  success  at  Manila.  What  should  this  mean  for 
pedagogy?  Two  things,  at  least.  In  the  first  place, 
in  the  assignment  of  work,  the  teacher  should  be  care- 
ful to  keep  within  the  hmits  of  the  child's  ability.  It 
is  a  great  mistake  to  suppose  that  because  the  activity 
which  one  puts  forth  in  the  accompHshment  of  a  task 


Ii8        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

is  the  chief  gain  to  be  derived,  therefore  it  is  of  no  con- 
sequence how  difficult  and  impossible  for  the  child 
the  assignment  is.  If  our  children  were  all  philoso- 
phers or  students  of  psychical  research,  it  would  be 
of  Httle  consequence  whether  the  assignment  were 
possible  of  solution  or  not.  But,  happily,  they  are 
not.  They  are  simply  children,  subject  to  the  encour- 
agements and  discouragements  of  common  humanity, 
and  in  school  they  ought  to  be  accorded  the  same 
fighting  chance  and  stimulations  that  adults  outside 
the  school  so  much  need,  and  without  which  they  so 
often  fail.  And  when  the  child  does  an  unusually 
difficult  piece  of  work,  or  improves  upon  himself  in 
any  way,  it  is  simply  his  due  that  the  teacher  recognize 
the  fact.  Again,  this  is  according  the  child  no  more 
than  his  elders  out  in  the  world  need  to  keep  them 
going.  Nothing  will  keep  children  at  their  work  for 
more  hours  than  the  fact  that  they  have  been  doing 
well,  and  that  this  fact  is  recognized  by  the  teacher. 

Many  pages  could  be  written  upon  the  social  effect  of 
success,  but  they  would  not  be  strictly  in  place  here. 
But  this  much  may  be  said:  No  help  will  serve  the 
person  who  is  down  so  much  as  that  which  assists  him 
to  achieve  a  victory.  We  too  often  feed  our  tramps 
]ust  enough  to  enable  them  to  get  to  the  next  house  or 


The  Stimulus  of  Success  119 

town;  we  too  often  relieve  the  drunkard  by  giving 
him  a  dime.  The  problem  that  confronts  the  social 
student  and  the  practical  pedagogue  right  here  —  and 
it  is  no  mean  problem  —  is  this :  How  can  people  who 
are  unnecessarily  or  temporarily  dependent  be  enabled 
to  achieve  a  success  in  something  that  is  worth  while? 
But  wherever  we  meet  people,  especially  the  young, 
let  us  not  be  too  fearful  lest  we  develop  their  vanity, 
and  let  us  be  a  little  more  careful  to  let  them  know 
that  we  appreciate  their  good  work. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

THE  INDIVIDUAL  IN  INSTITUTIONS 

Students  of  modern  philosophy  are  fond  of  show- 
ing that  many  of  our  fundamental  human  conceptions 
have  their  basis  and  origin  in  society;  that  as  indi- 
viduals we  never  should  have  arrived  at  what  are  now, 
for  each  of  us,  some  of  our  most  useful  and  matter- 
of-course  conceptions,  had  it  not  been  that  from  birth 
we  have  been  associating  with  our  fellow-creatures. 
And  such  thinkers  as  Dr.  Paul  Cams  find  great  pleas- 
ure in  showing  how  even  the  individual,  as  such,  has 
had  a  social  origin.  For  pedagogical  purposes  it  will 
not  be  necessary  to  enter  upon  such  abstruse  consider- 
ations. It  will  suffice  here  to  show  in  what  way  much 
of  the  individual's  present  equipment  is  due  to  his 
social  environment  —  to  his  life  among  people  and  in 
the  so-called  institutions. 

We  can  easily  imagine  a  first  family  settling  on  the 
frontier.  Indeed  we  know  of  first  famiHes  who  drove 
from  Pennsylvania  and  Virginia  through  the  wilderness 
to  what  was  then  the  frontier  in  the  Mississippi  Valley. 

120 


The  Individual  in  Institutions  121 

Ofttimes  a  single  family  settled  in  a  place  remote 
from  all  civilized  life  and  there  began  to  work  out 
its  own  temporal  destiny.  Such  a  family  living  all 
alone  on  the  frontier  was  in  every  particular  a  law 
unto  itself.  There  was  no  specialization  or  differen- 
tiation of  labor,  professions,  or  institutions.  The 
father  was,  at  least,  the  farmer,  the  carpenter,  the 
blacksmith,  the  shoemaker,  the  school  superintendent, 
the  minister,  the  policeman,  the  judge,  and  the  gov- 
ernor. The  mother  was  the  cook,  the  washwoman,  the 
housecleaner,  the  doctor,  the  nurse,  the  teacher,  and 
the  governor's  cabinet.  The  children  at  first  were 
merely  the  recipients  of  these  undifferentiated  minis- 
trations. It  can  be  seen  at  once  that  service  in  most, 
if  not  all  these  lines,  was  perforce  very  inefficient.  In 
a  certain  sense  this  family  was  very  independent,  but 
in  a  truer  sense  its  limitations  were  many  and  the 
horizon  of  its  hopes  not  wide.  The  teaching  of  the 
children  must  have  been  neglected  by  the  cook.  The 
cooking  of  wholesome  food  stuffs  for  the  family  must 
have  been  neglected  by  the  washwoman,  the  doctor- 
ing of  the  family  could  not  have  been  done  well  by 
the  housecleaner,  and  the  housecleaning  itself  was 
shghted  by  the  nurse.  The  same  sort  of  difilculties 
confronted  the  father  in  the  performance  of  his  mani- 


122        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teachin 


g 


fold  duties,  so  that  the  school  superintendent  must 
slight  the  farm,  and  the  farmer  must  slight  the  house 
building,  and  the  carpenter  must  slight  his  poHce 
duties. 

This  man  and  his  wife  were  free  to  do  all  of  these 
things  —  they  were  in  no  way  subjected  to  the  customs 
and  laws  of  a  surrounding  community;  yet  they  were 
the  slaves  of  their  own  social  isolation.  They  were 
not  free  to  do  anything  as. it  should  be  done  for  them- 
selves or  their  children.  Let  it  not  be  forgotten  that 
one  can  never  get  far  enough  into  the  wilderness  to 
escape  the  law  that  the  price  paid  for  being  a  Jack-of- 
all-trades  is  that  you  can  be  master  of  none.  They 
were  free  to  teach,  but  they  were  not  free  to  teach  well 
with  an  undivided  mind  and  heart. 

By  and  by  the  community  grew  by  the  addition  of 
other  families,  and  Hfe  began  to  differentiate  in  a  simple 
fashion.  A  certain  building  was  erected  or  set  apart 
for  school  purposes,  and  one  of  the  best  taught  of  the 
little  community  —  a  parent  or  an  older  child  in  some 
family  —  was  called  to  "keep  school"  for  a  few  months 
during  the  winter  season.  The  schoolhouse  also  served 
as  a  place  of  public  worship,  and  certain  gifted  indi- 
vidual members  of  the  community  became  the  religious 
leaders.    Business  also  began  to  differentiate.    The 


The  Individual  in  Institutions  123 

community,  although  small,  was  large  enough  so  that 
not  all  members  needed  to  do  exactly  the  same  things. 
Those  who  wished  to  till  the  soil  could  devote  most 
of  the  time  to  that,  and  those  who  wished  to  build 
houses  and  barns  could  devote  most  of  the  time  to 
such  work.  Certain  men  with  the  instinct  for  trading 
would  carry  whatever  surplus  of  goods  might  happen 
to  be  produced  in  the  home  neighborhood  up  and 
down  the  river,  sometimes  many  miles  away,  to  settle- 
ments which  had  a  shortage  of  this  particular  thing, 
but  a  surplus  of  something  else  just  as  desirable ;  and 
so  the  occupation  of  commerce  set  in.  Following  upon 
this  there  was  need  for  a  general  storehouse  where 
goods  collected  to  be  sent  out  could  be  kept  in  safety, 
and  where  imported  goods  could  be  distributed  to 
those  wishing  to  purchase;  this  was  the  excuse  for 
the  Httle  general  store  always  to  be  found  in  these 
early  frontier  settlements.  One  generation  ago  these 
stores  were  quite  common  in  the  Mississippi  Valley, 
and  to-day  they  are  not  uncommon  in  many  of  the 
newer  Western  states. 

Only  a  few  years  ago  many  of  our  leading  colleges 
had  a  professor  of  history  and  Kterature,  and  a  professor 
of  mathematics,  astronomy,  and  physics.  Seldom  do 
you  find  to-day  such  a  combination  of  subjects  for 


124        'T'he  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

one  man,  and  then  only  in  third-  and  fourth-rate 
institutions. 

From  the  simple  undifferentiated  life  of  the  pioneers 
we  have  passed  to  the  complex,  differentiated  hfe  of 
to-day  along  all  Hues.  As  a  rule  the  minister  is  no 
longer  a  spiritual  farmer  with  a  good  "common  school 
education";  the  teacher  is  no  longer  without  scholas- 
tic and  professional  training.  A  half  thousand  men 
are  required  to  make  a  piano,  each  doing  his  own  par- 
ticular piece  of  work,  and  a  score  of  men  are  required, 
in  the  same  way,  to  make  a  shoe. 

We  no  longer  have  a  professor  of  history  and  litera- 
ture, but  we  have  professors  of  history,  each  especially 
equipped  in  special  phases  of  the  subject,  and  pro- 
fessors of  literature,  each  with  Uke  special  equipment 
for  his  work.  And  so  it  is  in  all  our  professional  and 
business  hfe.  Practically  all  of  the  goods  of  the  United 
States  are  retailed  in  department  stores,  in  grocery 
stores,  shoe  stores,  men's  furnishing  stores,  hardware 
stores,  and  the  Hke. 

We  have  come  to  the  place  where,  Hke  St.  Paul,  we 
say,  each  of  us,  "This  one  thing  I  do."  Our  pioneer 
forefathers  said  these  many  things  we  do,  but  we  say 
this  one  thing.  In  this  movement  from  the  many  hues 
of  daily  interest  to  the  one  main  line,  there  has  been  a 


The  Individual  in  Institutions  125 

gradual  surrender.  I  am  not  able  to  make  my  shoes 
and  mend  my  watch  as  was  my  pioneer  forefather, 
neither  do  I  know  in  which  phase  of  the  moon  to  sow 
my  cabbage  seed  and  roof  my  house.  But  the  ele- 
ment of  gain  is  greater  than  the  element  of  loss.  The 
compensation  for  this  wholesale  surrender  has  been 
immense.  I  eat  better  cabbage  than  my  ancestor  who 
sowed  his  cabbage  seed  the  same  day  he  taught  school 
and  made  his  shoes.  I  live  in  a  better  house  than  he 
did;  my  minister  knows  more  and  preaches  better 
sermons  than  did  his,  and  my  children  are  taught  by 
better  teachers.  And  all  this  has  come  about  because, 
not  only  I,  but  practically  all  other  men  have  said, 
"This  one  thing  I  do." 

To-day  practically  every  line  of  activity  is  carried 
on  by  laborers  more  or  less  skilled  in  the  things  they 
do.  Formerly  these  things  were  done  by  men  living 
under  circumstances  which  made  skill  in  many  lines  a 
practical  impossibility. 

The  outcome  of  all  this  is  that  the  world*s  work  was 
never  so  well  done  as  it  is  now,  and  that  the  world's 
service  to  the  individual  was  never  so  great  as  at  the 
present  day.  And  there  never  has  been  a  time  in 
this  country  when  each  individual  was  so  dependent 
upon  those  about  him  for  so  many  of  the  necessities 


126        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

and  luxuries  of  life  as  to-day.  Because  I  do  but  one 
thing,  I  am  dependent  upon  my  fellows  for  all  things 
else.  This  in  a  very  brief  way,  hints  at  the  complexity 
of  our  modern  social  Hfe  and  the  mutual  dependence 
of  people  upon  one  another. 

What  is  the  educational  significance  of  all  this? 
Many  men  see  in  this  movement  a  large  social  excuse 
for  early  specialization  in  school  work.  The  children 
are,  they  say,  destined  to  do  certain  particular  things, 
and  they  must  acquire  great  skill  in  these  things. 
Let  them,  therefore,  begin  early  to  develop  such  skill, 
and  let  the  pubhc  schools  offer  ample  opportunity  for 
such  development  —  and  so  the  •  various  professions 
and  industrial  trades  are  knocking  hard  on  the  doors 
of  our  pubhc  schools  for  admission. 

It  is  admitted  on  every  hand  that  from  the  stand- 
point of  the  symmetrical  development  of  the  child 
they  are  wrong,  but  the  advocates  of  early  speciaH- 
zation  stand  unmovable  on  the  basis  of  the  com- 
plexity and  diversity  of  our  modern  Hfe.  The  society 
in  which  the  child  lives,  they  insist,  is  such  as  to  make 
early  special  preparation  imperative. 

Our  social  hfe  does  indeed  speak  a  loud  and  im- 
portant word  upon  this  subject,  but  I  do  not  believe 
that  it   is  the  word  which   many  people  think  they 


The  Individual  in  Institutions  127 

hear.  The  imperative  demand  seems  to  be  that 
the  schools  shall  offer  a  broad  basis  of  general  culture 
for  every  child  in  the  land.  When  every  one  worked 
at  almost  everything ;  w^hen  there  were  few  or  no  experts ; 
when  skill  in  all  kinds  of  labor  was  at  a  minimum,  a 
person  could  do  one  thing  about  as  well  as  another, 
and  it  made  little  difference  which  of  many  things  he 
turned  his  attention  to.  Displacement  from  any  par- 
ticular line  of  work  was  of  no  consequence,  for  his  lack 
of  skill  in  some  other  work  was  no  greater  than  else- 
where, and  he  moved  along  with  his  old-time  ease  and 
success.  If  he  couldn't  plow,  he  could  ditch;  if  he 
couldn't  ditch,  he  could  help  in  the  building  of  cabins ; 
if  he  found  no  employment  here,  he  could  roll  logs 
or  do  any  of  a  score  of  other  things  equally  well. 

Not  so  to-day;  every  displacement  at  the  present 
time  is  accompanied  by  considerable  inconvenience 
of  readjustment,  and  often  great  suffering.  Through 
loss  of  an  eye  or  limb,  through  deafness,  through  the 
invention  of  machinery,  thousands  of  people  are  annu- 
ally displaced  from  pursuits  which  they  have  narrowly 
prepared  themselves  to  pursue;  and  they  find  it  im- 
possible to  transfer  themselves  to  other  fields  already 
preempted  by  speciahsts  and  experts,  without  greatly 
reducing  their  standards  and  thus  entailing  great 
hardships. 


laS        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

Our  social  life  is  complex;  it  is  fearfully  diversified; 
it  demands  skill  and  expertness,  but  this  skill  must  be 
grafted  upon  a  broad  basis  of  general  culture,  if  society 
is  ever  to  free  itself  from  the  displaced  thousands  who 
are  obliged,  because  of  early  and  continuous  narrow 
training,  to  do  just  one  thing  or  nothing.  Happy  the 
person  who,  finding  that  through  some  physical  mis- 
hap or  some  social  transformation  there  is  no  more 
demand  for  the  thing  he  has  been  doing,  has  had  the 
opportunity  in  youth  and  young  manhood  to  develop 
himself,  and  to  lay  up  stores  of  information  in  many 
fields  of  knowledge.  New  skills  will  indeed  have  to 
be  attained,  but  with  this  broad  basis  of  culture  the 
time  required  will  be  comparatively  short,  the  diffi- 
culty greatly  reduced,  and  the  inconvenience  of  such 
transfer  comparatively  small.  Just  because  our  life 
is  narrow  and  intense  is  the  greatest  social  reason  why 
no  one  should  be  satisfied  with  narrow,  superficial 
preparation.  Not  only  does  theoretical  pedagogy 
demand  sound,  extensive,  general  education  for  the 
masses,  but  sociology  as  well  is  crying  aloud  for  the 
extension  of  the  opportunities  of  basal  training  to  every 
child  in  the  land,  of  however  humble  birth  and  in  how- 
ever circumscribed  field  he  seems  destined  to  pass  his 
Hfe. 


CHAPTER   XIV 

THE  TRAINING   OF  YOUNG   CHILDREN 

The  development  of  the  child  from  the  second  up 
to  the  seventh  or  eighth  year,  while  not  precisely  the 
same  during  any  succession  of  months  or  years,  is 
marked  by  no  decided  turns.  The  annual  increase 
in  height  and  weight  does  not  vary  greatly,  but  there 
is  a  steady  growth  in  both  these  directions,  very  much 
less  rapid  than  in  the  first  year,  and  less  rapid  than 
during  the  years  that  immediately  follow  this  stage. 
The  child  is  becoming  more  and  more  active,  but 
owing  to  a  lack  of  development  of  the  peripheral 
muscles  and  the  nerves  that  control  them,  his  move- 
ments are  uncoordinated,  so  that  he  is  not  effective 
as  a  producer  and  activity  is  its  own  excuse  for  being. 

Special  sense  education  and  the  development  of 
language  continue  at  a  rapid  rate;  the  brain  grows 
rapidly  and  approximates  its  full  weight  at  the  age  of 
seven  or  eight.  The  sensory  side  is  still  in  advance 
of  the  motor,  but  the  child  is  by  no  means  receptive 

129 


130        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

only.  His  activity,  resulting  in  no  outer  product  of 
value,  finds  its  immediate  value  in  itself,  and  so  this 
is  the  stage  of  play.  His  keen  sensory  side  catches  up 
every  suggestion,  making  this  preeminently  the  stage 
of  suggestion  and  imitation.  He  gets  most  of  his  in- 
formation first  hand  through  the  senses;  further  than 
this  his  mental  life  is  made  up  chiefly  of  reproduced 
images  and  crude  products  of  the  imagination,  al- 
though he  is  capable  of  carrying  on,  in  a  simple 
fashion,  many  of  the  higher  mental  processes. 

Unless  spoiled,  the  child  at  this  age  knows  no  such 
thing  as  shame  or  modesty;  he  is  apt  to  be  selfish  and 
fond  of  teasing  and  bullying,  as  has  been  so  well  shown 
by  Burk.*  His  notions  of  right  and  wrong  are  not 
clearly  defined  and  are  very  vacillating.  Any  vestige 
of  a  moral  code  that  he  may  possess  is  not  of  his  own 
making  but  has  been  impressed  upon  him  from  with- 
out through  suggestion  rather  than  precept. 

As  in  infancy  growth  is  the  prime  desideratum,  so 
here  it  is  the  thing  of  chief  importance;  not  so  much 
a  quiet  unfolding  of  the  latent  powers  of  the  child  as 
in  infancy,  but  rather  a  development  through  activity. 
But  it  must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  benefit  derived 

1  Frederick  Burk,  "Teasing  and  Bullying."  Pedagogical  Seminary, 
April,  1897. 


The  Training  of  Young  Children       131 

here  from  the  activity  of  the  child  is  to  be  found  in 
the  child  and  not  in  the  thing  which  he  does. 

**  During  the  period  of  brain  growth  in  bulk  up  to 
the  seventh  year,  when  the  full  size  and  weight  are 
almost  attained,  nutritive  influences  are  of  the  largest 
value.  How  far  this  can  reach  positively  needs  future 
demonstration,  but  is  rich  in  promise;  how  far  nega- 
tively, is  well  understood,  but  receives  as  yet  insufficient 
support.  There  are  during  these  early  days  more 
formative  power  and  less  output  of  energy  exhibited."^ 

All  of  the  essentials  for  normal  growth  in  the  stage 
of  infancy  should  be  diligently  observed  here  as  well 
—  nutrition,  cleanhness,  sunshine,  fresh  air,  and  care 
to  prevent  arrested  development  from  diseases  and 
traumatisms.  But  in  addition  to  these  things,  there 
arises  here  the  pedagogic  problem  of  positive  training, 
physical  and  mental. 

The  first  question,  of  course,  is  this:  Should  the 
child  receive  any  systematic  training  during  this  stage, 
or  should  we  simply  observe  the  foregoing  conditions 
for  growth  and  keep  hands  off? 

This  much  can  be  said  in  regard  to  this  question. 
Biology  and  psychology  tell  us  that  what  one  can  do  at 

1  J.  Madison  Taylor,  "  The  Causes  of  Mental  Impairment  in  Chil- 
dren."   A. M.S.  Bulletin,  July  15,  1895. 


132        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

any  given  time  depends  more  or  less  upon  what  he  has 
been  doing;  i.e.  the  Hfe  of  one  stage  is  determined 
very  largely  by  the  life  preceding  this  stage.  From 
about  two  up  to  seven  or  eight  the  child  is  acting  and 
reacting.  He  is  giving  himself  his  first  kinks  and 
turns.  He  is  laying  out  the  lines  for  his  future  autom- 
atisms and  driving  the  stakes.  His  style  of  sitting, 
walking,  speaking,  and  throwing,  his  style  of  reaction 
to  authority,  his  style  of  social  reaction,  are  all  becom- 
ing defined  and  taking  set  during  these  plastic  years. 
The  lines  are  being  laid  for  or  against  the  child  whether 
he  will  or  not.  Care  and  systematic  training  should 
be  given  during  this  stage  only  in  such  measure  as  will 
assure  the  best  approach  in  all  of  these  Knes  to  the 
years  that  are  to  follow.  For  such  guidance  the  essen- 
tials are  sensible  sympathy  and  a  rare  fund  of  insight 
and  self-control. 

Where  we  do  not  know  the  wise  course  in  training, 
the  watchword  should  be  ''hands  off."  But  the 
most  commonplace  teacher  or  parent  knows  that  if 
a  child  sits  "humped  up"  the  first  years  of  his  life, 
the  chances  are  that  he  will  never  sit  erect ;  if  he  is 
allowed  to  fly  into  a  fury  and  scream  and  tear  his  hair 
during  these  years,  the  tendency  later  will  be  to  do 
something  worse;   if  he  does  everything  in  a  slouchy, 


The  Training  of  Young  Children       133 

careless,  half-finished  way,  with  great  difficulty  will 
he  ever  learn  to  do  things  in  any  other  way.  If  he  is 
allowed  to  lie  and  steal  with  impunity,  he  will  develop 
into  a  thoroughgoing  liar  and  thief.  With  respect 
to  these  and  similar  things  the  child  should  not  be 
allowed  to  develop  at  random.  Who  knows  more, 
can  do  more;  who  knows  less,  should  most  assuredly 
do  less.  In  a  word  then,  our  motto  for  this  stage 
should  not  be  "hands  off,"  but  rather  this:  a  better 
knowledge  of  child  life,  and  greater  sympathy  with  it, 
so  that  we  may  be  able  to  know  how  and  when  to  lay 
hands  on. 

Let  us  notice  a  second  question:  If  the  child  is  to 
receive  more  or  less  systematic  training  at  this  time, 
what  should  it  be  ? 

It  has  already  been  observed  that  during  this  stage 
the  child's  keen  sensory  side  catches  up  every  sugges- 
tion, so  that  this  is  the  stage  of  suggestion  and  imita- 
tion. Here  is  one  of  the  keys  to  the  solution  of  the 
problem.  Another  key  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that 
this  is  preeminently  the  play  stage.  We  have  here  a 
hint  at  both  matter  and  method,  (i)  The  greater 
part  of  the  child's  activity,  and,  indeed,  all  of  it  at  the 
beginning  of  this  stage,  should  be  play  and  not  work. 
(2)  Work   should    be    only    introduced   gradually   in 


134        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

proportion  as  the  child  develops  in  mental  and  physical 
control.  (3)  The  child  should  not  be  required  to 
perform  a  perfect  piece  of  objective  work. 

In  regard  to  method,  but  two  things  can  be  said  with 
any  degree  of  definiteness.  (i)  Suggestion  should 
play  an  important  r61e,  and  (2)  the  spontaneity  of 
the  child  should  have  full  freedom. 

This  gives  us  a  basis  for  the  discussion  of  these  two 
practical  questions:  (a)  What  things  may  be  taught 
the  child  at  this  time?  (b)  How  should  they  be 
taught  ? 

It  would  require  many  volumes  to  discuss  the  merits 
and  demerits  of  the  entire  catalogue  of  subjects,  so 
the  purpose  here  will  be  merely  to  touch  upon  enough 
things  to  bring  out  the  thought  and  illustrate  the  prin- 
ciple. Let  us  make  the  application  to  the  child's 
play,  work,  and  conduct. 

Play.  If  play  is  to  serve  its  highest  end,  it  must  be 
spontaneous  for  the  most  part,  free  from  outer  direc- 
tion, and  careless  of  ends.  Play  under  close  super- 
vision is  a  self-contradiction  —  it  not  only  defeats  the 
ends  of  play,  but  ceases  to  be  play.  Parents  and 
teachers  need  to  remember  that  to  require  children 
to  play  according  to  prescribed  formulae  means  to 
have  them  quit  play  and  go  to  work,  and  at  the  same 


The  Training  of  Young  Children       135 

time  robs  them  of  all  the  benefit  of  the  initiative ;  and 
that  thereby  the  main  avenue  of  approach  to  the 
child's  life  is  closed.  It  is  a  matter  of  common  obser- 
vation that  to  know  a  child,  or  any  one  else  for  that 
matter,  we  must  leave  him  free  to  live  his  own  Ufe. 
This  free  Hving  of  the  child  is  his  play.  It  is  com- 
mendable in  parents  to  join  in  the  plays  with  their 
children,  but  if  they  do  so,  they  must  do  it  for  the 
most  part  at  the  suggestion  of  the  child,  and  play  the 
part  the  child  would  have  them  play  in  his  own  way. 

Kindergartners  and  teachers  in  elementary  schools 
would  do  well  to  observe  the  same  thing.  To  call 
work  play  doesn't  make  it  play,  and  any  performance 
planned  and  closely  supervised  by  the  teacher,  how- 
ever attractive  it  may  be  in  itself,  reahzes  less  in  play 
results  than  in  work  results.  This  suggests  the  amount 
of  freedom  and  spontaneity  that  should  characterize 
the  school  plays  of  this  early  stage,  whether  within 
or  without  the  schoolroom.  If  the  kindergarten  em- 
phasizes play  as  an  element  in  its  curriculum,  it  must 
not  be  tardy  in  recognizing  what  are  the  essential 
elements  of  play.  Furthermore,  we  should  remem- 
ber that,  as  Sheldon  and  Gulick  have  shown,  during 
these  years  children  do  not  take  kindly  to  organized 
play  or  so-called  teamwork,  and  when  inveigled  into 


136        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

it,  are  unsuccessful.  It  must  not  be  forgotten  that 
during  these  years  the  accessory  muscles  are  not  under 
good  control,  that  movements  are  uncoordinated, 
that  the  child  is. not  effective  as  a  producer,  and  that 
activity  finds  its  immediate  value  in  itself.  Coopera- 
tion is  essentially  a  work  factor  and  not  a  play  factor; 
and,  this  being  preeminently  the  play  stage,  the  child 
is  not  successful  in  cooperative  games.  Ample  op- 
portunity for  unorganized,  unhampered,  spontaneous 
activity  on  the  part  of  every  child  should  be  the  play 
ideal  of  every  kindergarten  and  elementary  school. 

Work.  In  considering  the  work  appropriate  to 
this  stage  of  the  child's  development,  some  things 
need  to  be  restated  as  a  basis  for  discussion:  (i)  that 
the  end  of  work  is  a  definite  product  —  physical 
or  mental;  (2)  that  this  is  the  stage  of  imitation 
and  suggestion  par  excellence;  (3)  that  the  accessory 
muscles  are  not  under  good  control;  and  (4)  that 
the  child's  mental  life  is  made  up  chiefly  of  percepts, 
reproduced  images,  and  crude  products  of  the  im- 
agination. 

Taking  up  these  points  in  the  order  named,  we  note 
first  that  the  child  should  be  required  to  do  only  those 
things  for  which  he  has  a  fair  degree  of  efficiency; 
otherwise  the  end  for  which  work  is  intended  is  de- 


The  Training  of  Young  Children       137 

feated  and  through  the  force  of  habit  a  positive  injury 
may  come  to  the  child.  But  those  things  for  which 
he  does  have  a  fair  degree  of  capabiHty,  he  should  be 
required  to  do.  For,  if  it  be  true  that  at  this  time  all 
work  and  no  play  makes  Jack  a  dull  boy,  it  is  also 
true  that  all  play  and  no  work  makes  Jack  a  mere  toy. 
The  principle  is  equally  appHcable  in  the  fields  of 
mental  and  physical  work. 

In  making  pedagogical  deductions  from  the  second 
point,  viz.  that  this  is  preeminently  the  stage  of  sug- 
gestion and  imitation,  we  might  say  in  passing  that 
both  common  observation  and  psychological  research 
have  shown  the  truth  of  the  statement. 

What  the  child  gets  through  suggestion  at  this  stage 
amounts  to  infinitely  more  in  every  way  than  what  he 
gets  in  the  form  of  precepts.  To  illustrate:  neither 
formal  grammar  nor  even  language  lessons  is  necessary 
to  insure  good  usage  on  the  part  of  the  child  who  has 
Hved  among  people  who  speak  correctly;  and  no 
amount  of  both  will  insure  correct  usage  on  the  part 
of  the  child  who  is  not  so  situated.  A  year's  change 
of  residence  served  to  alter  in  every  way  the  pronun- 
ciation of  two  children  aged  three  and  six,  while  the 
pronunciation  of  their  parents  was  entirely  unaffected. 
Such  cases  could  be  multiphed  indefinitely.    In  fact, 


138        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

suggestion  and  imitation  are  the  basis  for  the  develop- 
ment of  language  in  both  the  race  and  the  individual, 
and  should  be  the  chief  and,  aside  from  incidental 
correction,  the  only  means  of  helping  the  child  in  his 
language  at  this  time.  Let  the  child  hear  correct  usage 
and  as  soon  as  he  is  able  to  read  let  him  have  access  to 
a  variety  of  well- written  story-books,  and  he  will  be 
helped  infinitely  more  than  by  any  amount  of  formal 
instruction.  The  latter  method  of  helping  the  child 
not  only  fails  in  its  purpose,  but  even  does  positive 
harm,  inasmuch  as  it  prematurely  brings  him  to  a 
consciousness  of  his  own  mistakes  and  of  errors  of 
which  he  would  otherwise  happily  remain  entirely 
ignorant.  The  language  ideal  at  this  time  is  satura- 
tion in  good  forms.  Let  the  eye  and  especially  the 
ear  feast  upon  good  language,  but  never  make  the 
child  acutely  conscious  of  the  fact  that  one  thing  is 
good  and  something  else  is  bad.  An  acute  conscious- 
ness of  good  usage  is  only  second  in  harmfulness  to  an 
acute  consciousness  of  bad  usage.  This  is  the  ripe 
age  at  which  to  give  the  child  a  start  in  the  foreign  lan- 
guages, provided  he  is  so  situated  that  he  may  apply 
both  eye  and  ear  to  the  work.  If  those  with  whom  he 
associates  use  the  foreign  language,  and  if  the  litera- 
ture at  his  disposal  is  written  in  this  language,  he  will 


The  Training  of  Young  Children       139 

at  this  time  learn  the  second  language  almost  as  easily 
as  he  did  his  mother  tongue.  But,  if  he  hears  the 
mother  tongue  only  or  mostly,  and  the  foreign  lan- 
guage merely  in  the  class  room,  it  would  perhaps  be 
better  to  defer  the  work  until  a  later  stage. 

In  the  second  and  third  points  under  consideration 
we  have  ground  for  determining  the  nature  of  the 
manual  work  suitable  for  this  stage. 

Since  President  G.  Stanley  Hall's  first  lectures  upon 
the  subject  some  years  ago,  and  the  pubUcation  of 
Burk's  work  ^  on  the  development  of  the  nervous 
system  from  fundamental  to  accessory,  many  kinder- 
gartners  have  very  wisely  discarded  work  which  re- 
quires fine  movement  and  dehcate  adjustment,  such 
as  fine  needlework,  work  upon  dehcately  perforated 
cardboards,  and  the  laying  of  small  sticks;  and  they 
have  harmonized  their  requirements  in  writing  more 
with  the  facts  of  modern  physiology  and  psychology, 
by  making  greater  use  of  the  blackboard  and  allowing 
children  to  do  this  work  on  a  larger  and  freer  scale  in 
every  way.  The  effect  of  the  later  methods  upon 
drawing  has  been  equally  wholesome,  and  this,  together 

1  Frederick  Burk,  "  From  Fundamental  to  Accessory  in  the  Devel- 
opment of  the  Nervous  System  and  of  Movements,"  Pedagogical 
Seminary,  October,  1898. 


140        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

with  the  facts  brought  out  by  Lukens  and  Barnes 
from  their  study  of  children,  gives  a  pretty  safe  basis 
for  determining  the  drawing  work  to  be  done  at  this 
stage.  The  researches  of  Ross/  Bryan,^  and  Burk^ 
indicate  that  from  the  standpoint  of  physiology  and 
psychology  the  work  in  drawing  at  this  time  should 
be  just  what  Lukens  and  Barnes  have  found  it  to  be 
when  the  child  is  unhampered  and  left  perfectly  free 
to  express  himself.  The  studies  of  the  former  show 
that  there  is  but  little  peripheral  control  at  this  time, 
but  with  proper  practice  control  may  be  developed  rap- 
idly at  seven  or  eight  years  of  age,  while  the  studies  of 
the  latter  show  that  the  earliest  drawings  of  the  child 
are  apt  to  be  mere  scribbles.  The  former  have  shown 
that  the  child  is  incapable  of  fine  movements  and  deli- 
cate adjustments  but  can  easily  make  larger  move- 
ments, and  the  latter  have  shown  that  after  the  scribble 
stage  the  child  naturally  draws  with  a  few  large  telling 
lines,  making  the  drawing  quite  simple.  Lukens 
agrees  with  Barnes  in  his  thought  that  this  is  the  time 

1  James  Ross,  "  Handbook  of  the  Diseases  of  the  Nervous  System." 
Churchill,  London. 

2  William  L.  Bryan,  "  The  Development  of  Voluntary  Motor  Ability." 
American  Journal  of  Psychology^  November,  1892. 

8  Frederick  Burk,  "  On  the  Development  of  Voluntary  Motor  Abil- 
ity."    American  Journal  of  Psychology^  Vol.  V. 


The  Training  of  Young  Children       141 

for  the  alphabets  of  drawing,  but  that  the  technique  or 
grammar  of  the  subject  should  be  deferred  till  a  later 
time,  say  about  the  ninth  year ;  and  Mr.  Henry  T. 
Bailey,  in  the  Massachusetts  Report  of  the  Board  of 
Education,  says  that,  "If  the  power  to  draw  is  not 
acquired  before  the  end  of  the  ninth  year,  it  is  not 
acquired  in  the  pubhc  schools."  ^ 

Inasmuch  as  our  purpose  here  is  to  set  out  in  relief 
the  stages  in  child  development  with  some  of  the  more 
obvious  pedagogical  deductions  only,  the  subject  of 
drawing  as  such  cannot  be  discussed  fully ;  we  can 
consider  merely  some  of  the  primal  facts  that  will 
serve  as  guides  in  working  out  the  details.  As  the 
ideal  at  this  stage,  on  the  side  of  physiology  and  psy- 
chology, should  be  not  so  much  a  definite  product  as 
a  bridging  over  from  the  unorganized,  uncontrolled 
movements  at  the  beginning  of  this  stage  to  a  higher 
degree  of  mental  and  physical  coordination  and  con- 
trol at  its  close,  so  at  this  time  the  ideal  in  drawing 
should  be  not  so  much  one  who  can  draw,  but  rather 
a  movement  away  from  scribble  to  plain  definite  lines 
whose  combinations  have  some  meaning.  (Great 
care  should  be  taken  to  avoid  arrest  of  development 

1  Report  of  the  Massachusetts  Board  of  Education,  1 894-1 895. 
Boston,  Mass.,  1896. 


14^        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

either  from  crowding,  retardation,  or  reversion.) 
Since  suggestion  plays  so  important  a  role  at  this  time, 
"interest  in  drawing  should  be  early  developed  by 
giving  children  access  to  an  abundance  of  good  pic- 
tures, illustrated  books  and  magazines,  plates  of  great 
men  and  great  scenes,  and  great  sculptures,  paintings, 
and  edifices.  These  helps  are  of  the  utmost  impor- 
tance in  all  art  education,  and  should  be  in  the  en- 
vironment of  the  child  from  the  beginning.  Drawing 
thus  becomes  a  pleasure  to  children,  and  they  acquire 
considerable  skill  without  any  instruction."  ^ 

The  general  principles  in  a  rational  course  in  draw- 
ing would  serve  equally  well  in  other  lines  of  manual 
work.  Local  conditions  will  be  a  determining  factor 
in  the  technique  of  all  of  this  work,  but  not  in  the 
principles  underlying  it.  In  all  of  the  manual  work 
up  to  seven  or  eight  years  of  age,  the  spontaneity  of 
the  child  should  be  allowed  to  assert  itself.  Many 
will  naturally  begin  with  other  forms  than  drawing. 
Some  take  to  paper- cutting  first,  and  follow  this 
cut  with  drawing.  I  have  seen  pictures  of  animals, 
by  a  boy  seven  years   of  age,  so   true  to   life  that 

1  Herman  T.  Lukens,  "  A  Study  of  Children's  Drawings  in  the 
Early  Years."  Pedagogical  Seminary ^  October,  1896,  Vol.  IV,  pp. 
79-1 10. 


The  Training  of  Young  Children       143 

even  the  mental  mood  of  the  animal  could  easily  be 
detected.  Although  the  pictures  in  themselves  were 
plain,  the  conception  and  execution  showed  a  poten- 
tial artist.  This  work  for  him  was,  above  all  things 
else,  a  mode  of  expression,  just  as  speaking,  writing, 
or  drawing  are  for  other  children.  It  was  followed  by 
coloring  and  writing,  with  unusually  rapid  progress  in 
both.  It  is  difficult  to  guess  what  the  result  would 
have  been  if  this  child,  at  the  age  of  four  or  five,  had 
been  required  to  conform  to  a  cut-and-dried  course  of 
manual  work.  But  we  cannot  take  what  this  child 
did  so  well  as  evidence  that  all  children  of  his  age 
should  do  a  certain  amount  of  paper- cutting.  The 
valuable  pedagogical  suggestion  here  is  that  children 
should  be  supplied  in  the  home  and  in  the  school 
with  a  variety  of  materials  and  have  an  opportunity  to 
express  themselves  with  perfect  freedom. 

If  the  development  of  the  race  and  the  child  have 
any  pedagogical  significance,  this  period  is  evidently 
the  ripe  time  for  beginning  the  study  of  nature.  We 
are  not,  neither  shall  we  be,  free  from  the  need  of  and 
interest  in  the  three  fundamental  human  requisites,  viz. 
food,  clothing,  and  shelter.  The  poet  and  the  philoso- 
pher cannot  prosper  on  rhyme  and  speculation  alone. 
They,  as  well  as  the  scientist  and  the  laborer,  must  have 


144        Th.c  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

life  before  they  have  their  own  pecuhar  lives ;  they,  too, 
must  be  fed,  clothed,  and  sheltered.  We  have  here  a 
center  in  which  the  interests  of  all  humanity  con- 
verge. The  poorest  and  the  most  ignorant  have  little 
more,  and  the  most  favored  have  nothing  that  can  be 
substituted  for  these  same  fundamentals.  The  need 
for  biologic  knowledge  was  the  first  and  continues  to  be 
the  primary  need  of  life.  To  know  in  some  way  which 
things  are  for  us  and  which  against  us,  which  will 
cure  and  which  will  kill ;  in  short,  to  know  the  life  with 
which  and  in  which  we  live  is  our  primary  need.  This 
is  true  not  only  chronologically,  but  logically  and  bio- 
logically as  well.  There  is  no  escape  from  it.  If 
there  is  any  truth  in  the  ''recapitulation  theory,"  and 
if  the  natural  spontaneous  interest  of  the  child  is  to 
be  a  determining  factor  in  the  selection  of  material 
for  the  kindergarten  and  elementary  school,  it  would 
seem  to  be  a  serious  error  to  omit  those  things  which 
have  been  the  earliest  and  most  persistent  elements  in 
the  development  of  the  race  and  in  which  the  child 
finds  his  greatest  delight. 

It  would  be  outside  the  scope  of  this  book  to  dis- 
cuss the  standpoints,  sources,  and  methods  in  nature 
study.  Suffice  it  to  say  that  the  most  prevailing  stand- 
points are  what  are  known  as  the  (i)  mytho-poetic, 


The  Training  of  Young  Children       145 

(2)  human  value  relation,  (3)  ethical  value,  (4)  aesthetic 
value,  (5)  intellectual  value.  None  of  these  is  all- 
comprehensive  and,  indeed,  it  may  be  that  all  of  them 
are  not,  but  each  will  serve  as  an  organizing  idea  for 
the  work.  A  pedagogical  question  which  arises  is, 
In  which  order  should  these  different  ideas  be  devel- 
oped? The  interest  of  the  child  must  determine  this 
very  largely.  Perhaps,  for  young  children,  better  and 
more  varied  results  can  be  gotten  from  the  mytho- 
poetic standpoint.  Perhaps,  for  the  adolescent,  the 
standpoint  of  ethical  values  can  be  used  most  effec- 
tively. We  see  here  how  intricately  related  are  all  the 
problems  and  phases  of  pedagogy.  To  plan  a  course 
in  nature  study,  one  not  only  needs  to  know  nature  as 
it  is  to-day,  but  also  the  cultural  stages  through  which 
the  race  has  passed,  and  above  all  one  needs  to  be  a 
student  of  children.  Whoever  tries  to  solve  this  or 
any  other  pedagogical  problem  from  the  standpoint 
of  some  Httle  phase  of  work  in  which  he  may  have 
particular  interest  is  more  apt  to  go  wrong  than  right. 
The  great  text-book  of  nature  is  open  before  us.  In 
this,  both  the  race  and  the  child  find  their  primary 
and  fundamental  needs  suppUed,  and  their  first  and 
most  abiding  interest  awakened.  In  the  kindergarten 
and  the  elementary  school,  when  practicable,  the  care 


146        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

and  culture  of  animals  and  plants  should  be  the  first 
aim  ;  where'  this  is  not  practicable,  association  and 
acquaintance  with  them  should  be  encouraged.  This 
study  should  constitute  the  very  core  and  heart  of 
elementary  education  and  should  be  secondary  to  no 
other  phase  of  work. 

This  is  also  the  time  to  use  myth  and  narrative  his- 
tory. For  the  child  the  world  is  shrouded  in  mystery 
and  peopled  with  strange  and  unheard-of  beings. 
The  mysterious  appeals  strongly  to  all,  but  especially 
to  the  child,  whose  experience  is  Hmited  and  to  whom 
the  world  is  largely  a  mystery.  Although  his  curiosity 
for  meaning  is  intense,  the  world  cannot  be  interpreted 
to  him  scientifically  or  philosophically.  Myth  offers 
a  splendid  opportunity  for  introducing  him  to  many  of 
the  forces  and  passions,  hopes  and  fears,  victories  and 
defeats,  that  have  made  his  world  what  it  is.  It  should 
be  taught  as  the  counterpart  of  nature  study,  the  one 
introducing  the  child  to  life  as  it  is  found  in  plants 
and  animals  and  the  other  introducing  him  to  human 
life  and  spirit.  Following  close  upon  myth  or  carried 
along  with  it  should  come  narrative  history  —  not  the 
history  grind,  but  the  historical  story.  Children  have 
great  deHght  in  change,  in  movement,  in  events.  This 
is  especially  true  where  the  agents  are  human  or  where 


The  Training  of  Young  Children       147 

they  are  conceived  as  possessing  or  being  ruled  by 
a  spirit  akin  to  human  spirit.  The  child  is  not  inter- 
ested in  the  intricately  complex  principles  and  pro- 
cesses of  modern  society,  but  his  interest  in  the  simple 
and  more  tangible  beginnings  is  absorbing.  Any 
phase  of  history  that  can  be  subjected  to  the  form  of 
the  simple  narrative  story  is  excellent  pabulum  for  the 
child  at  this  time. 

There  remains  to  be  discussed  the  subjects  of  read- 
ing, writing,  and  arithmetic  (the  three  R's)  for  children 
before  their  seventh  or  eighth  year.  To  make  more 
firm  the  ground  on  which  deductions  in  regard  to 
these  subjects  are  to  be  based,  let  us  notice  some 
additional  things  that  are  true  of  the  child  and  his  de- 
velopment during  this  stage.  In  his  address  on  Psychic 
Processes  and  Muscular  Exercise,  Mosso  *  says :  — 

''In  man  the  brain  develops  later  than  in  all  other 
animals,  because  his  muscles  also  develop  later.  The 
striped  muscles  are  more  incomplete  at  birth  in  man  than 
in  any  other  animal.  For  this  fact  that  the  human  brain 
develops  so  slowly  I  am  able  to  discover  no  other  reason 
than  this,  that  at  birth  the  organs  which  effect  movement 
over  which  the  brain  exercises  its    authority  are  not  yet 

1  Angelo  Mosso,  "  Psychic  Processes  and  Muscular  Exercise." 
Decennial  Celebration  of  Clark  University^  1899,  pp.  383-395.  Pub- 
lished by  Qark  University,  Worcester,  Mass. 


148        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

complete.  Modern  views  show  a  tendency  to  confirm 
what  the  great  philosophers  of  Greece  already  recognize, 
viz.  that  children  ought  to  begin  to  read  and  write  only 
with  the  tenth  year ;  that  it  is  injurious  for  the  development 
of  the  brain  to  be  fettered  to  the  school  desk  when  only 
five  or  six  years  old.  Attention  produces  not  only  the  same 
chemical  effects  and  the  same  fatigue  as  muscular  exertion 
does,  but  we  feel  also,  when  we  are  attentive  to  anything, 
the  characteristic  muscular  strain  on  the  occiput,  the  fore- 
head, and  other  parts  of  the  body.  The  more  mobile  the 
extremities  of  an  animal  are,  the  more  intelligent  it  is. 

''The  mutual  relation  of  intelligence  and  movement 
is  one  of  the  most  constant  factors  in  nature;  the  move- 
ments always  change  where  intelligence  changes.  Micro- 
cephalic individuals  have  an  awkward  gait,  and  an  incon- 
siderable dexterity  in  the  movements  of  the  hands.  This 
change  is  still  more  striking  in  the  case  of  idiots.  When 
the  brain  has  been  fatigued  by  exclusively  intellectual 
activity,  the  sensitiveness  of  the  hand  and  direct  irrita- 
bility of  the  muscles  are  also  decreased.  The  influence  of 
the  hand  upon  the  development  of  a  language  is  evident 
from  the  fact  that  an  aphasic  patient  is  made  to  write  in 
order  that  he  may  gradually  regain  the  power  of  speech. 
The  relation  between  muscular  movements  and  conscious 
processes  is  so  intimate  that  when  the  arms  and  hands  of 
a  hypnotized  person  are  brought  into  certain  positions, 
and  certain  muscles  by  external  contact  made  to  contract, 
certain  emotions  are  induced  corresponding  to  those  mus- 
cular contractions." 


The  Training  of  Young  Children       149 

But  as  has  already  been  noted,  Ross,  Bryan,  and 
Burk  have  shown  that  before  seven  or  eight  years  of 
age  the  child  is  to  a  high  degree  ineffective  as  a  motor 
being.  The  work  of  Lukens  and  Barnes  on  drawing, 
as  well  as  common  observation  by  every  one,  reen- 
forces  the  thought.  If  there  is,  then,  this  close  paral- 
lelism between  movement  on  the  one  hand  and  psychic 
processes  on  the  other,  as  is  claimed  by  Mosso,  it  must 
follow  that  inasmuch  as  movements  are  spontaneous, 
uncoordinated,  and  but  sHghtly  under  the  voluntary 
control  of  the  child,  so  will  his  thoughts  likewise  be 
spontaneous,  flitting,  and  illogical;  and  this  is  exactly 
what  we  find  in  everyday  observation.  Dr.  Vulpius 
has  studied  the  fibers  which  horizontally  traverse  the 
surface  of  the  hemispheres,  which  he  calls  the  tan- 
gential fibers.  These  appear  on  the  outer  layer  of 
the  cortex  in  the  fifth  month  of  life;  in  the  seventh 
month  the  tangential  fibers  can  be  found  in  the  deep 
layers;  while  in  the  layer  between,  the  cross  fibers 
appear  only  after  a  year.  "In  the  child  of  eight,  and 
perhaps  even  of  seven  years,  the  fibers  of  the  cortex 
and  medullary  substances  are  complete  in  number  and 
cahber,  and  have  taken  the  same  arrangement  as  in 
the  adult.  It  is  during  the  development  of  the 
brain  and  the  nervous  system  before  birth  and  during 


150        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

these  first  years  of  growth  that  malnutrition  and  per- 
verted action  occur,  which  result  in  defective  mental 
power."  The  point  in  this  that  needs  to  be  empha- 
sized here  is  the  close  relation  between  nervous  nutri- 
tion and  mental  power.  Neurologists  and  students 
of  children's  diseases  all  agree  that  up  to  seven  or 
eight  years  of  age  is  the  period  when  the  effects  of  bad 
heredity  are  brought  out,  owing  to  the  rapid  rate  of 
growth  and  the  instability  of  the  organism.  If,  as  Hurd 
says,  in  the  process  of  education,  energy  designed  to 
further  the  growth  of  the  brain  is  dissipated  in  func- 
tional activity,  hereditary  tendencies  to  disease  become 
thereby  developed,  or  the  development  of  the  brain  is 
limited  and  defects  become  evident  which  under  more 
favorable  circumstances  would  not  have  existed. 

In  summarizing  the  foregoing  considerations  we 
reach  these  conclusions  :  (i)  A  close  relation  exists 
between  movement  and  intelligence.  (2)  The  child's 
movements  are  uncoordinated  and  spontaneous. 
(3)  Therefore  the  child's  mental  life  at  this  time  is  apt 
to  be  spontaneous,  flitting,  and  illogical.  (4)  The 
brain  is  developing  primarily  in  growth  and  not  in 
function.  (5)  We  should,  therefore,  expect  a  very 
simple  kind  of  mental  life.  (6)  The  necessity  is  for 
brain  nutrition  and  not  brain  functioning  to  bridge 


or  THE 

The  Training  of  Young  Children       i^ 


over  the  period  when  hereditary  tendencies  to  disease 
are  most  likely  to  be  developed. 

If  these  things  are  true,  a  question  for  pedagogy  to 
answer  is  :  Are  reading,  arithmetic,  and  writing,  as 
daily  assigned  tasks,  conducive  to  the  best  development 
and  highest  welfare  of  the  child?  Is  the  amount  of 
information  and  so-called  discipline  derived  from  the 
study  of  these  subjects  by  children  under  eight  years 
of  age  worth  the  cost?  A  comparison  of  the  outlay 
with  the  income  compels  the  conclusion  that  they  are 
not  worth  the  cost.  The  work  in  these  subjects  violates 
the  foregoing  principles  of  child  life  and  development 
during  this  stage. 

First  let  us  notice  reading  in  the  light  of  the  sum- 
marized statement  of  facts.  Perhaps  no  one  who 
reads  this  will  remember  his  own  peculiar  psychology 
when  he  learned  to  read  his  mother  tongue,  but  most 
will  remember  their  experience  in  learning  a  foreign 
language.  Students  of  the  French  and  the  German 
languages  find  at  first  that  if  they  are  very  careful 
about  their  pronunciation,  they  are  apt  to  go  over  a 
page  without  extracting  the  thought ;  on  the  other 
hand,  they  find  that  if  they  are  anxious  about  the 
thought,  their  pronunciation  is  bad.  Young  men  and 
women  find  it  very  difficult  to  get  both  faultless  form 


152        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

and  meaning  until  they  have  spent  many  years  upon 
the  language.  And  yet  we  require  the  child,  with 
his  simple,  undeveloped,  uncoordinated  physical  and 
mental  Hfe,  to  perform  an  even  more  difficult  task. 
Who  does  not  remember  what  a  difficult  thing  it  was, 
in  reading  the  foreign  language,  even  to  keep  the 
place?  But  this  is  only  one  element  in  the  child's 
difficulty;  he  must  hold  his  book  up,  hold  it  open, 
keep  the  place,  and  by  close  attention  and  deHcate 
adjustment  of  the  eyes,  he  must  decipher  the  charac- 
ters in  themselves  and  keep  them  related  to  each  other, 
and  then  we  expect  him  to  keep  the  meaning  and  read 
with  spirit  and  understanding.  The  performance  of 
such  a  task  is  not  only  injurious,  but  in  most  cases  im- 
possible, and  its  requirement  is  positively  cruel.  Such 
work  should  not  be  a  fixed  daily  task  of  the  child  until 
there  is  a  fair  degree  of  muscular  coordination  and 
control,  and  mental  strength  commensurate  to  such 
physical  development.  It  should  not  be  required  until 
he  has  passed  the  period  for  the  cropping  out  of  weak 
hereditary  tendencies  due  to  instability  of  organiza- 
tion and  rapid  growth,  which  would  be  at  about  the 
age  of  nine  or  ten.  For  essentially  the  same  reasons, 
work  in  arithmetic  and  penmanship  should  be  taken 
up,  if  at  all,  only  incidentally  during  this  early  stage, 


The  Training  of  Young  Children       153 

Aside  from  the  purely  concrete  number  work,  arith- 
metic is  sufficiently  abstract  and  general  to  demand 
at  least  a  fair  degree  of  brain  functioning  and  the 
abihty  to  direct  attention  and  to  carry  on,  in  a  simple 
way  at  least,  the  processes  of  abstraction,  association, 
and  generahzation.  There  is  nothing  in  the  physiology 
or  psychology  of  development  which  indicates  that  the 
average  child  of  seven  or  eight  is  capable  of  these 
things.  By  constant  appeals  to  the  child,  together 
with  scolding  and  threatening,  a  few  arithmetical 
facts  may  be  hammered  into  his  head,  but  no  one 
would  ever  guess  that  he  could  do  anything  worth 
while  with  these  facts  outside  of  the  schoolroom;  on 
the  contrary,  every  one  who  has  given  the  matter 
even  passing  attention  knows  that  he  cannot.  If  the 
child  should  give  all  the  time  and  energy  that  are 
worse  than  wasted  on  arithmetic  to  sensible  work  in 
nature  study,  myth,  and  narrative  history,  for  which 
he  has  both  interest  and  ability,  the  world  would 
be  revealed  to  him  in  innumerable  ways,  learning 
would  not  be  a  drudgery  and  a  bore,  and  time  would 
be  found  for  the  introduction  of  many  kinds  of  work 
that  have  a  real  significance  and  value  for  him.  He 
would  gain  more  effective  arithmetical  knowledge 
and  abihty  incidentally  in  connection  with   the  sub- 


154        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

jects  of  vital  interest  and  importance  than  are  gained 
by  the  humdrum,  formal  study  of  the  dry-as-dust 
arithmetic. 

Reading  and  arithmetic  should  not  be  taught  as 
formal  subjects  until  the  close  of  the  transitional 
period  at  about  the  age  of  nine  or  ten.  The  conserv- 
atism which  keeps  us  doing  things  simply  because 
we  have  been  doing  them  must  be  broken  away  from 
whenever  there  is  ground  for  so  doing,  and  especially 
when  it  is  plain  that  there  is  a  better  thing  to  do. 
When  reading  and  arithmetic  constituted  almost  the 
entire  curriculum,  child  Hfe  and  its  development  were 
not  the  criterion.  Social  rather  than  physiological 
and  psychological  facts  were  the  determining  factors. 
Professor  Dewey  has  well  said  that:  "The  primary 
school  grew  practically  out  of  the  popular  movement 
of  the  sixteenth  century  when,  along  with  the  invention 
of  printing  and  the  growth  of  commerce,  it  became  a 
business  necessity  to  know  how  to  read,  write,  and 
figure.  The  aim  was  distinctly  a  practical  one;  it 
was  utility  —  getting  command  of  these  tools,  the 
symbols  of  learning,  not  for  the  sake  of  learning  but 
because  it  gave  access  to  careers  in  life  otherwise 
closed."  The  social  aspect  of  education  to-day 
should  not  be  ignored  in  the  planning  of  school  work, 


The  Training  of  Young  Children       155 

but  it  should  not  be  emphasized  to  the  hurt  of  the 
child.  Any  attempt  at  curriculum  making  or  educa- 
tional procedure  which  does  not  take  into  account  the 
laws  and  stages  of  development  of  the  one  to  be 
taught,  is  apt  to  go  wide  of  the  mark  and  result  in 
positive  injury. 

Conduct.  In  deducing  some  of  the  more  general 
principles  which  underUe  the  conduct  and  moral  train- 
ing of  the  child  up  to  seven  years  of  age,  we  must  here, 
as  in  his  play  and  work,  make  our  determinations 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  child  himself  and  not  from 
the  standpoint  of  the  adult.  Two  points  must  be 
borne  in  mind.  (i)  Many  things  which  would  be 
immoral  for  the  adult  have  no  moral  significance  what- 
ever for  the  child.  (2)  The  child's  standard  of  moral- 
ity, so  far  as  he  can  be  said  to  have  a  standard,  does 
not  come  to  him  so  much  by  intuition  as  by  precept, 
and  not  so  much  by  precept  as  by  unconscious  sug- 
gestion and  imitation.  The  first  point  will  be  help- 
ful in  determining  the  content  of  morahty  for  the 
child,  and  the  second  will  serve  as  a  guide  in  deter- 
mining the  method  in  moral  training. 

Nothing  could  be  more  deadening  to  the  develop- 
ment of  the  child  than  an  attempt  to  make  him  con- 
form in  every  way  to  the  moral  standard  of  the  adult. 


156        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

Because  the  child  appropriates  at  this  age  that  which 
does  not  belong  to  him,  he  is  not  therefore  a  thief  as 
his  father  would  be  under  the  same  conditions.  Be- 
cause the  child  in  the  vividness  of  his  imagination  does 
not  adhere  strictly  to  the  literal  truth,  he  is  not  there- 
fore a  liar.  Because  the  child  connives  in  every  con- 
ceivable way  to  attain  a  desirable  end,  he  is  not  there- 
fore a  trickster;  and  because  the  naked  child,  even 
at  seven  or  eight,  manifests  no  sense  of  shame,  he  is 
not  therefore  immoral.  From  the  standpoint  of  the 
adult  these  things  would  all  be  serious  breaches  of 
morahty,  while  from  the  standpoint  of  the  child  they 
have  little  or  no  moral  significance.  But  there  will 
come  a  time  in  the  Hfe  of  the  child  when  these  very 
things  will  have  moral  significance. 

The  pedagogical  question  is:  What  can  be  done 
for  the  child  at  this  time  which  will  result  in  a  sense 
of  right  and  wrong  and  a  disposition  to  do  the  one 
and  avoid  the  other,  but  which  will  not  result  in  prud- 
ishness  or  a  precocious  and  morbid  sense  of  moral 
delinquency?  Prudishness  and  moral  morbidness, 
above  all  things  else,  must  be  avoided  during  these 
years.  Better  no  sense  of  morality  at  all  than  that 
the  child  of  six  or  seven  should  either  hold  himself  up 
as  a  bright  and  shining  example  of  right  conduct,  or 


The  Training  of  Young  Children       157 

that  he  should  magnify  his  childish  mistakes  into  car- 
dinal and  unpardonable  sins.  Such  moral  attitudes 
are  far  more  hopeless,  even,  than  almost  any  other 
childish  misdemeanor.  It  is  not  good  for  the  child 
to  be  acutely  conscious  either  of  his  goodness  or  his 
badness.  His  mind  for  the  most  part  should  be,  and 
under  normal  conditions  will  be,  occupied  with  some- 
thing other  than  self.  It  is  in  this  connection  that 
direct,  positive,  moral  training  at  this  time  not  only 
fails  to  accomplish  desirable  ends,  but  does  positive 
harm;  the  child  and  his  behavior  are  apt  to  be  the 
topic  of  discussion.  For  this  reason,  in  all  attempts 
to  teach  morals,  an  indirect  method  —  the  reading 
of  a  story,  the  relating  of  an  incident,  and  the  Uke  — 
is  superior  in  every  way  to  the  more  direct  treatment, 
which  should  be  held  in  reserve  for  special  cases.  We 
often  teach  the  child  to  discern  the  right  from  the 
wrong,  and  admonish  him  to  cleave  to  the  one  and 
forsake  the  other,  only  to  find  that  as  a  result  of  our 
teaching,  or  in  spite  of  it,  the  second  state  of  that  child 
is  worse  than  the  first.  As  a  rule,  the  discriminations 
that  he  is  capable  of  making  are  not  effective  in  deter- 
mining the  course  that  he  will  pursue.  Fine  discrimi- 
nations and  admonitions  are  apt  to  be  valuable  in 
proportion  to  their  scarcity. 


158        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

Nowhere  in  the  development  of  the  child  do  sug- 
gestion and  imitation  play  so  lasting  and  important 
a  r61e  as  in  the  development  of  morals  and  conduct. 
As  nothing  helps  the  child  so  much  in  the  acquisition 
and  use  of  good  language  forms  as  saturation  in  good 
language  forms,  oral  and  written,  so  nothing  will 
instill  within  him  the  habit  of  using  pure  rather  than 
vulgar  language  so  much  as  association  with  those 
who  always  use  pure  language.  No  amount  of  moral- 
izing on  the  sinfulness  of  lying  will  help  the  child  so 
much  as  living  with  people  who  always  speak  the 
truth;  and  nothing  will  more  readily  and  effectively 
develop  in  the  child  a  sense  of  personal  and  property 
rights  than  association  with  those  who  are  careful  to 
observe  the  rights  of  their  fellows,  and  who  do  not 
appropriate  to  their  own  use  that  which  does  not 
belong  to  them.  The  first  great  concern  of  parents 
and  teachers  who  are  interested  in  the  morals  of  their 
children,  should  be  their  own  behavior. 

The  moral  ideal  for  the  stage  of  childhood  is  inno- 
cence of  right  and  wrong,  morally  considered.  Every 
child  knows  that  there  are  some  things  that  may  be 
done  and  some  that  may  not.  This  knowledge  should 
come  to  him  as  a  matter  of  course.  He  soon  learns 
to  keep  his  hands  out  of  the  fire  because  he  doesn't 


The  Training  of  Young  Children       159 

like  the  result  of  putting  them  into  it ;  and  so  he  must 
early  learn  to  desist  from  many  things  for  the  same 
simple  reason  that  he  doesn't  like  the  consequence; 
but  he  does  not,  neither  can  he,  look  upon  these  things 
as  right  or  wrong  in  themselves.  I  have  known  chil- 
dren to  repeat  the  oaths  of  their  elders  with  as  little 
sense  of  guilt  as  if  they  were  repeating  the  catechism, 
and  in  so  doing  they  were  not  immoral.  The  danger, 
however,  is  that,  having  the  language  at  their  com- 
mand, they  will  find  it  but  a  short  step  to  supply  the 
content  which  means  profanity.  Something  should 
be  done  to  prevent  such  results.  Prohibition  of  the 
use  of  such  language,  with  Httle  or  no  emphasis  upon 
the  naughtiness  of  it,  is  the  most  rational  and  effective 
remedy.  And  so  it  is  with  the  child's  conduct  in  gen- 
eral. He  must  obey  the  word  of  his  elders.  The 
experience  of  the  parent  and  the  teacher  must  count 
for  something,  else  what  is  the  significance  of  parent- 
hood or  control  in  school? 

There  will  come  a  time  when  the  child  should  be 
thrown  upon  his  own  responsibiUty  —  left  more  or  less 
free  to  do  as  he  desires;  but  not  so  in  his  early 
years.  Indeed,  at  the  beginning  of  life,  so  far  are 
we  removed  from  the  possibilities  of  such  an  ideal 
that    implicit    obedience    should    be    insisted    upon. 


i6o        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

Some  one  has  wisely  said,  "If  the  child  does  not  obey 
when  -first  commanded,  he  should  be  punished  ;  but 
if  the  teacher  even  succeeds  in  securing  obedience 
after  he  has  commanded  many  times,  he,  and  not  the 
child,  should  be  punished."  Teachers  must  know 
how  demoralizing  it  is  to  keep  nagging  at  children. 
They  must  know  also  that  there  are  some  requests 
whose  reasonableness  cannot  be  explained  to  the 
child.  In  such  cases  imphcit,  unquestioned  obedience 
should  be  expected. 

The  child  with  a  healthy  mind  does  not  contemplate 
the  wickedness  of  one  possible  line  of  action  and  the 
goodness  of  another  Hne,  and  upon  the  basis  of  this 
discrimination  determine  his  act.  If  he  be  a  normal 
child,  he  desists  from  doing  certain  things,  because 
he  has  learned  that  these  are  things  that  must  not  be 
done,  and  he  falls  into  the  habit  of  letting  them  alone. 
On  the  other  hand,  if  he  be  a  normal  child,  he  does 
certain  things  over  and  over  again,  until  his  habit  of 
action  begins  to  take  form.  And  thus  the  child  should 
pass  from  his  childhood  into  the  early  years  of  youth 
with  the  alphabets  of  moral  habits  pretty  firmly  fixed, 
but  in  no  sense  a  contemplator  of  deeds. 


CHAPTER   XV 

THE  SIGNIFICANCE   OF  THE  SECOND  DENTITION 

In  passing  from  the  stage  of  childhood  to  that  of 
youth,  at  about  the  age  of  eight,  there  is  a  marked 
transition  period  which  has  many  of  the  characteristics 
of  the  preceding  stage,  and  at  the  same  time  develops 
new  features  peculiar  to  the  stage  that  follows  it. 
As  in  the  other  transitional  periods,  no  hard  and  fast 
lines  can  be  drawn,  but  in  general  the  time  is  between 
seven  or  eight  years  of  age  at  the  beginning  and  nine 
or  ten  at  the  close.  During  these  years  old  things 
are  passing  away  and  new  ones  appearing. 

At  about  seven  or  eight  years  of  age  the  brain  has 
approximated  its  full  weight,  and  is  changing  in  its 
development  from  increase  in  size  to  increase  in  func- 
tion. Along  with  this  there  is  a  change  in  the  rate 
of  bodily  growth ;  so  that  the  annual  increase  will  be 
greater  at  the  beginning  of  this  stage  than  it  has  been 
through  the  stage  of  childhood.  The  child  is  losing 
his  first  teeth  and  the  permanent  ones  are  coming. 
This  more  objective  and  superficial  change  seen  in 

i6i 


1 62        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

the  case  of  the  teeth  has  many  physical  and  mental 
counterparts  ;  the  child  is  not  quite  at  his  best  either 
physically  or  mentally. 

Doubtless  many  of  the  disturbances  of  this  time 
are  due  to  bad  nutrition,  which  finds  its  cause  in  im- 
proper mastication  of  the  food,  the  child  sometimes 
lacking  as  many  as  three  or  four  teeth  at  a  time.  This 
same  thing  is  seen  in  many  of  the  domestic  animals, 
notably  the  horse,  which  gets  its  second  teeth  at  the 
age  of  four.  Dealers  in  horses  for  the  market  will 
not  buy  under  five  years  of  age.  Their  stock  remark 
is  that  a  horse  at  four  is  of  no  account.  While  this 
is  not  literally  true,  any  one  who  has  handled  young 
horses  knows  that  a  four-year-old  does  not  have  the 
endurance  or  the  trustworthiness  of  a  three-year-old. 
Reggner  ^  observed  that  young  monkeys  often  sicken 
and  die  of  fever  when  shedding  their  milk  teeth,  and 
the  same  process  is  certainly  not  free  from  risk  in  the 
human  subject.  Nervous  children  often  become  ema- 
ciated during  its  progress,  or  suffer  from  neuralgia  or 
cough ;  and  from  having  been  hardy  and  robust,  they  be- 
come pale  and  dehcate.  Apparently  in  connection  with 
the  second  dentition  also,  complaints  are  sometimes 
made  of  headache,  tenderness  of  the  eyes,  and  lassitude. 

1  J.  Crichton  Brown,  "  Education  of  the  Nervous  System." 


Significance  of  the  Second  Dentition      163 

At  this  period  is  encountered  also  that  curious  and 
sometimes  puzzHng  perversion  of  the  moral  nature, 
known  as  malingering.  From  egotism  and  insatiable 
craving  for  notice  and  sympathy,  from  a  desire  to 
escape  work,  from  jealousy,  or  from  some  more  com- 
plex motive,  the  boy  or  girl  simulates  disease  —  and 
may  do  so  with  considerable  ingenuity  and  success  — 
or  exaggerates  some  trifling  ailment.  The  disorder 
is  generally  poverty  of  the  blood  and  nervousness, 
which  not  rarely  are  connected  with  constitutional 
changes  associated  with  the  second  dentition. 

There  is  a  change  in  the  vascular  system  at  this 
time.  Krohn  has  found  that  the  child  of  eight  is 
fatigued  much  more  easily  than  one  of  six  or  seven  or 
one  nine  years  of  age.  There  is  apt  to  be  dilation  of 
the  heart  and  cardiac  incompetence,  such  as  shortness 
of  breath  and  readiness  of  fatigue.  The  reaison  for  the 
dilated  heart  at  this  time  is  the  sudden  increase  in  weight 
of  the  child  without  corresponding  increase  in  size  of 
heart  muscle.  The  dilation  or  tendency  to  dilation  and 
fatigue  curves  represent  the  fact  that  the  child  must 
conserve  his  strength  until  his  heart  grows  to  its  work. 

Dr.  Christopher  says:  — 

"We  must  recognize  that  the  period  from  seven  to  nine 
years  of  age,  quite  irrespective  of  the  other  conditions  of 


164        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

the  life  of  the  child,  is  one  in  which  fatigue  occurs  very 
readily  and  is  one  in  which  damage  to  the  heart  is  likely 
to  be  produced.  This  period  in  child  life  is  one  to  which 
special  attention  should  be  called  because  of  the  extremely 
insidious  character  of  its  approach.  It  is  not  only  in  phys- 
ical fatigue  that  it  manifests  itself,  but  in  mental  fatigue 
and  in  the  exhibition  of  many  nervous  symptoms  otherwise 
utterly  unaccountable. 

''One  of  the  commonest  manifestations  is  the  appear- 
ance of  general  laziness  on  the  part  of  the  child,  and  it  is 
extremely  common  to  conclude  that  the  child  needs  more 
exercise.  As  a  matter  of  course  it  is  perfectly  evident 
that,  of  all  things,  the  child  does  not  need  more  exercise 
at  this  period,  but  in  every  way  its  force  should  be  con- 
served and  its  labors  reduced  to  the  smallest  possible  degree 
consistent  with  the  maintenance  of  health.  The  duration 
of  this  period  lasts  occasionally  a  few  months,  although 
in  a  number  of  instances  I  have  known  it  to  last  two  years 
and  even  longer,  during  which  time  the  child's  failure 
to  develop  sufficient  progress  at  school,  and  its  manifesta- 
tions of  unpleasant  nervous  symptoms  have  been  the  cause 
of  great  anxiety  on  the  part  of  parents.  It  is  clear  that  the 
school  work  during  this  period  of  life  should  be  dimin- 
ished to  a  point  below  that  which  has  been  done  the  pre- 
vious year  and  which  may  be  undertaken  safely  the  next 
year."  ^ 

1  W.  S.  Christopher,  "  Three  Crises  in  Child  Life."  Child  Study 
Monthly,  December,  1897. 


Significance  of  the  Second  Dentition     165 

The  studies  of  Jastrow-^  indicate  that  at  this  time 
there  is  a  transition,  change,  or  stage  in  the  develop- 
ment of  the  special  senses,  notably  the  sense  of  sight. 
The  results  of  his  investigations  and  observations 
show  that  children  who  lose  their  sight  before  about 
seven  years  of  age  (the  time  coincides  approximately 
with  the  time  for  the  full  weight  of  the  brain)  do  not 
have  visual  images,  and,  as  a  rule,  those  who  lose  their 
sight  after  this  time  have  them.  This,  perhaps,  does 
not  point  so  much  to  a  change  in  the  development 
of  the  organ  as  it  does  to  a  central  change.  However 
this  may  be,  it  is  significant  as  marking  a  time  of  tran- 
sition in  the  course  of  development,  and  is  fraught 
with  great  pedagogical  value,  not  only  for  those  who 
teach  all  classes  of  blind  people,  but  also  for  those  who 
teach  normally  developed  people. 

One  of  the  most  striking  changes  that  occur  at  this 
time  is  to  be  seen  in  the  entirely  different  nature  of 
the  somatic  diseases  preceding  and  following  this 
period.  During  the  stage  of  infancy,  from  two  to 
seven,  is  the  time  for  infectious  diseases,  and  after 
this  time,  as  Holt  shows  in  his  treatise  on  **The  Dis- 
eases of  Infancy  and  Childhood,"  there  is  a  transi- 

2  Joseph  Jastrow,  "  The  Dreams  of  the  Blind."  New  Princeton 
Review^  1888,  Vol.  V. 


1 66        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

tion  from  the  infectious  diseases  of  childhood  to 
the  diseases  which  are  more  often  found  in  adults 
than  in  children.  The  change  in  nervous  diseases 
at  seven  or  eight  indicates  even  more  clearly  than 
does  the  change  in  somatic  diseases  that  this  is  a 
time  of  transition.  Before  this  time  —  which  Clous- 
ton  *  designates  as  the  period  of  most  rapid  brain 
growth,  special  sense  education,  motor  coordinations, 
and  speech  —  the  prevaihng  nervous  diseases  are  con- 
vulsions, squint,  stammering,  backwardness  of  speech, 
night  terrors,  infantile  paralysis,  tubercular  menin- 
gitis, hydrocephalus,  and  rickets.  "Every  one  of 
these,"  he  says,  ''can  be  connected  with  the  immense 
brain  growth  of  the  period,  with  the  development  of 
certain  essential  brain  functions  at  this  time,  such  as 
speech  equilibration  and  the  other  essential  muscular 
coordinations,  with  the  intense  trophic  activity,  and 
with  the  rapid  metabolism  of  every  tissue,  with  edu- 
cation of  function  of  special  sense  organs  and  their 
brain  centers." 

The  character  of  the  nervous  diseases  which  follow 
this  short  transitional  period  in  most  cases  differs  very 
greatly  from  that  of  the  diseases  preceding  it.  We 
have  now,  says   Clouston,  the  period  when  muscular 

1  T.  S.  Qouston,  "  The  Neurosis  of  Development." 


Significance  of  the  Second  Dentition     167 

motion  becomes  coordinated  fully  with  emotion,  as 
seen  especially  in  facial  expression  ;  and  the  nervous 
diseases  which  characterize  the  years  from  eight  or 
nine  to  thirteen  or  fourteen  are  chorea,  some  forms 
of  epilepsy  and  somnambuHsm,  megrim,  asthma,  and 
some  eye  defects. 

In  this  transitional  period,  at  about  eight  years  of 
age,  there  are  as  many  striking  indications  of  physical 
disturbance  and  readjustment  as  are  found  in  the 
pubescent  period  about  which  so  much  has  been 
written  and  spoken.  Doubtless  if  the  period  at  eight 
carried  with  it  any  objective  sign  of  the  birth  of  a 
function  so  deep-seated  and  universal  as  is  the  sex 
function,  it  would  not  have  been  long  in  receiving  the 
attention  due  it,  for  in  other  ways  the  changes  which 
occur  at  about  eight  are  even  more  striking  than  those 
that  occur  at  about  thirteen. 

As  was  said  in  the  introduction  of  this  topic,  the 
life  at  this  time  is  both  retrospective  and  prophetic. 
We  have  both  the  traces  of  the  stage  preceding  it,  and 
suggestions  of  the  stage  following.  Part  of  the  child's 
teeth  are  temporary  and  part  of  them  are  permanent; 
the  child's  brain,  although  it  has  approximated  its 
growth  in  size  and  is  turning  toward  development 
of  function,  nevertheless  continues  to  grow  at  a  slow 


1 68         The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

rate,  and  functions  often  inaccurately  and  with  diffi- 
culty. The  vascular  system  is  as  it  was,  while  the 
muscular  system  has  taken  a  sudden  leap  ahead,  and 
the  disproportion  in  the  development  of  these  two 
systems  at  this  time  results  in  cardiac  incompetence 
and  fatigue.  The  somatic  and  nervous  diseases  are 
about  evenly  divided  between  those  characteristic  of 
the  stage  preceding  and  the  one  following.  There 
seems  to  be  no  abrupt  change  in  the  development 
of  the  senses  at  this  time,  and  yet  the  period  is  sig- 
nificant, inasmuch  as  those  who  lose  their  sense  of 
sight  before  this  time  are  apt  not  to  have  visual  images 
and  those  who  lose  their  sense  of  hearing  before  this 
time  are  apt  not  to  have  auditory  images. 

This,  then,  is  a  time  of  readjustment  in  the  vas- 
cular, muscular,  and  nervous  systems,  and  of  great 
disturbance  in  the  functions  of  circulation,  digestion, 
and  nutrition.  Coming  at  about  the  age  of  eight, 
when  the  child  is  apt  to  be  in  his  third  or  fourth  year 
of  school,  these  facts  are  fraught  with  great  peda- 
gogical significance.  It  seems  evident  that  the  child 
is  not  capable  of  the  same  amount  of  physical  and 
mental  activity  and  endurance  as  he  was  at  six  or 
seven  or  as  he  will  be  at  nine  or  ten,  and  this  fact  in 
itself  would  demand  on  the  on^  hand  a  decrease  in 


Significance  of  the  Second  Dentition      169 

the  amount  of  work  required,  and  on  the  other  hand 
the  provision  of  ample  opportunities  for  pleasant 
recreation  and  amusement  and  quiet  rest. 

Dr.  Jackson  says,  referring  to  the  disorders  inci- 
dental to  the  second  dentition:  "The  remedies  which 
I  have  found  most  useful  are  as  follows  :  First,  a 
reHef  from  study  or  from  regular  tasks,  yet  using 
books  as  far  as  they  afford  agreeable  occupation  and 
amusement.  Second,  exercise  in  the  open  air,  pre- 
ferring the  mode  most  agreeable  to  the  patient  and 
in  most  grave  cases  the  removal  from  the  town  to  the 
country.'* 


CHAPTER  XVI 

THE  PEDAGOGY  OF  YOUTH 

Although  no  two  records  on  the  growth  of  chil- 
dren coincide  throughout,  there  seems  to  be  a  general 
agreement  that  at  about  eight  or  nine  years  of  age 
comes  a  sudden  increase  followed  by  a  slight  decrease 
in  annual  increment  until  the  time  just  preceding 
puberty.  So  far  as  is  known  there  is  nothing  pecuHar 
in  the  development  of  the  nervous  system  at  this  time. 
There  seems  to  be  a  steady  development  of  the  func- 
tioning power  of  the  brain  and  a  very  slight  increase 
in  its  weight.  These  years  of  slow  growth  from  about 
nine  to  twelve  or  thirteen  years  mark  a  third  definite 
stage  in  the  development  of  the  child.  Both  the 
physical  and  psychical  Hfe  are  unique  and  demand 
a  unique  pedagogy.  The  child  is  not  simply  his 
former  self  grown  larger;  he  is  in  many  ways  an 
altogether  different  being.  The  transitional  period 
from  seven  to  nine  has  served  to  transform  him  not 
only  nominally,  but  actually,  from  the  stage  of  child- 
hood to  that  of  youth. 

170 


The  Pedagogy  of  Youth  171 

The  chances  for  life  are  better  now  than  they  have 
been  heretofore,  the  girls  being  least  susceptible  to 
disease  at  eleven  (3.23  per  1000)  and  the  boys  at 
twelve  (3.42  per  1000)/  The  somatic  diseases  to 
which  the  child  is  Hable,  although  not  peculiar  to  this 
stage  of  youth,  are  almost  entirely  different  from  those 
of  the  preceding  stage;  while  the  nervous  diseases  to 
which  he  is  most  Hable  are  to  a  high  degree  peculiar 
to  this  stage.  The  heart  muscle  has  increased  in 
size  proportionately  to  the  size  of  the  body  and  so 
fatigue  is  less  easily  induced  than  at  the  age  of  eight. 
"Sensation,  special  and  common,  and  its  organs  have 
been  developed ;  muscular  coordination  has  pro- 
gressed far ;  and  many  of  the  mental  faculties,  such 
as  memory,  fancy,  and  emotion,  have  all  acquired 
some  strength ;  but  muscular  action  has  not  been  fully 
coordinated  with  feehng,  and  this  is  the  period  of 
life  when  this  coordination  takes  place.  "^ 

This  is  the  period  of  endurance  and  of  coordination, 
mental  and  physical,  and  mental  with  physical ;  the 
time  for  the  storing  up  of  reserve  power  and  the  es- 
tablishment of  automatisms  —  the  essential  forerunner 

1  E.  M.  Hartwell.  Report  on  Physical  Training  in  the  Boston  Pub- 
lic Schools,  1893  and  1895.     (Boston,  Mass.) 

2  T.  S.  Clouston,  "The  Neurosis  of  Development."  (Morison,  Lec- 
tures for  1890.)     Oliver  and  Boyd,  Edinburgh,  1891,  p.  138. 


172         The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

of  the  reproductive  function.  It  is  the  intermediate 
stage  of  life  between  the  stages  of  greatest  brain 
growth  and  of  highest  functional  advance;  between 
the  pure  gathering  in  of  egoism  and  the  appearance 
of  the  higher  altruism.  Above  all  things  else  this  is 
the  "laying  up,"  the  ''salting  down"  stage  of  child 
Hfe. 

As  before,  let  us  consider  the  stage  of  youth  from 
the  threefold  standpoint  of  play,  conduct,  and  work. 

Play.  In  regard  to  the  child's  play  at  this  time, 
the  principles  recognized  in  the  earlier  stage  should 
not  be  lost  sight  of  here.  The  play  should  be  un- 
hampered, spontaneous,  and  careless  of  ends.  But 
other  elements  enter  now  which  were  not  present 
before.  This  is  the  time  when  the  transition  is  made 
from  the  purely  individual  games  and  plays  to  the  full- 
fledged  cooperative  games.  Every  nine-year-old  boy 
has  his  "nine"  and  "eleven"  or  belongs  to  the  teams 
of  some  other  boy.  From  the  immediate  artistic 
standpoint  all  such  cooperative  play  is  a  failure,  but 
its  mental  and  physical  significance  to  those  who 
participate  can  hardly  be  gainsaid.  At  first  the  cap- 
tain of  a  team  will  often  be  unable  to  hold  his  men 
together  long  enough  for  a  single  game;  a  bruised 
finger,  a  bad  start,  an  imaginary  sHght  sustained  by 


The  Pedagogy  of  Youth  173 

a  prominent  member  of  the  team,  and  a  multitude 
of  equally  trifling  matters  play  havoc  with  the  captain's 
organizing  genius. 

These  things  are  not  so  true  of  the  twelve-year-old 
team.  Three  years  have  served  to  work  a  transfor- 
mation. Now  teams  are  organized  that  remain  in- 
tact all  the  season;  almost  every  town  has  its  "North 
Enders,"  ''South  Enders,"  "West  Siders,"  and 
"East  Siders."  Whereas  the  nine-year-olds  hardly 
knew  the  "outs"  from  the  "ins,"  the  twelve- year- 
olds  know  the  game  as  well  as  the  most  inveterate 
"rooters."  Furthermore,  they  have  attained  the  mus- 
cular strength  and  coordination  to  execute  it.  Hand 
in  hand  with  this  development  of  muscular  strength 
and  control  have  gone  mental  strength  and  control. 
The  team  hangs  together  after  a  half-dozen  crushing 
defeats;  they  do  not  disband  because  the  pitcher  has 
an  off  day  or  because  the  center  rush  fumbles.  They 
have  learned  that  to  have  one's  own  way  absolutely 
in  play  means  to  play  alone,  and  that  teamwork 
means  self-control  in  the  highest  sense. 

Aside  from  heakh,  which  should  be  the  chief  con- 
sideration, the  great  gains  to  be  derived  from  play  at 
this  time  are  to  be  seen  in  the  increased  mental  and 
physical  control  developed  in  cooperative  games  and 


174         The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

plays.  Along  with  this  control  and  subjection  of 
one's  whims  and  caprices  for  the  sake  of  the  group, 
there  must  be  found  the  same  spontaneity  and  free- 
dom that  characterizes  the  stage  up  to  seven.  The 
chief  difference  lies  in  this,  that  whereas  in  the  earher 
stage  the  plea  is  for  the  absolute  freedom  and  spon- 
taneity of  the  individual,  here  we  must  insist  upon  the 
same  degree  of  freedom  and  spontaneity  on  the  part 
of  the  group.  There  the  individual  quit  playing  with 
his  doll  and  began  playing  with  his  toes  at  will. 
Here  the  group  quits  playing  ball  and  begins  playing 
war  at  will.  There  the  child  exercised  the  initiative 
in  every  particular.  Here  the  group  exercises  this 
prerogative.  There  must,  in  the  latter  as  in  the 
former  case,  be  absolute  freedom  from  external  con- 
trol. Better  that  a  team  should  disband  a  dozen 
times  a  day  than  that  it  should  be  organized  by 
the  captain's  father  and  sustained  through  paternal 
compulsion. 

Moreover,  one  of  the  things  that  every  child  must 
learn  sooner  or  later  is  that  if  he  is  to  live  in  society 
there  are  some  things  he  may  do  and  many  things  he 
may  not  do.  One  of  the  hardest  lessons  that  a  boy 
has  to  learn  who  moves  from  the  country  into  the 
city  is  that  he  cannot  throw  stones  in  every  direction. 


The  Pedagogy  of  Youth  175 

It  is  not  easy  for  him  to  reconcile  himself  to  the  propo- 
sition that  all  his  throwing  must  be  straight  up. 
But  that  is  the  price  one  must  pay  for  social  Ufe. 
There  is  no  place  where  this  lesson  can  be  taught  so 
naturally  and  brought  home  to  the  child  so  forcibly 
and  in  a  way  that  will  be  accepted  so  readily  as  in 
his  own  cooperative  games  and  plays.  Thus  uncon- 
sciously to  the  child  and  entirely  incidentally  has  come 
to  him  one  of  the  most  essential  and  fundamental 
lessons  of  social  hfe. 

Conduct.  In  the  following  discussion  of  work  for 
this  stage,  and  in  the  discussion  of  conduct  for  the 
previous  stage,  most  things  that  bear  upon  conduct 
at  this  time  are  given.  All  of  the  principles  suggested 
for  the  earher  stage  should  be  observed  here.  But  it 
must  not  be  forgotten  that  the  child's  notion  of  right 
and  wrong  has  developed  pari  passu  with  his  physical 
and  mental  development.  He  should,  therefore,  be 
held  responsible  for  his  conduct  in  a  way  that  here- 
tofore would  have  been  unjust.  Insight  and  rational 
sympathy  on  the  part  of  teacher  and  parent  are  of 
the  greatest  importance.  Judicious  but  close  disci- 
pline should  be  exercised.  While  the  fundamentals 
for  work  as  suggested  below  are  being  drilled  into 
the  child  at  this  time,  it  is  just  as  necessary  that  the 


176        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

fundamentals  in  conduct  should  not  be  slighted.  No 
task  should  be  set  that  is  too  difficult  for  the  child  to 
perform,  and  no  performance  should  be  accepted 
that  is  not  well  done.  Irremediable  injury  will  come 
to  the  child  who  is  allowed  to  approximate  roughly 
a  standard  in  work  and  conduct.  Fairness  should 
always  characterize  any  requirement  in  conduct,  and 
the  child  should  be  expected  to  fulfill  this  requirement 
promptly,  fully,  and  unequivocally.  These  are  the 
years  for  disciphne  in  conduct  as  well  as  in  work. 

Work.  The  stage  from  nine  to  thirteen  differs 
from  the  one  up  to  seven  years  in  that  the  earlier  was 
preeminently  the  play  stage,  while  the  latter  should 
be  preeminently  a  work  stage.  It  was  found  that 
before  seven  the  child  is  not  apt  to  have  developed 
mental  and  physical  control  sufficient  to  enable  him 
to  produce  effectively  and  that  he  is  apt  to  be  injured 
by  trying  to  do  so.  After  the  transitional  period,  at 
about  eight,  the  average  child  is  found  to  possess 
sufficient  strength  and  mental  and  physical  control  to 
produce  effectively  in  various  ways  without  endanger- 
ing his  health  or  development.  It  must  never  be  lost 
sight  of  that  an  injudicious  amount  of  work  is  to  be 
avoided  at  all  times. 

This,  then,  is  the  time  when  the  child  should  be 


The  Pedagogy  of  Youth  177 

initiated  into  hard  work.  It  is  a  time,  also,  when 
his  tissues,  muscular  and  neural,  are  plastic  and  when 
he  is  largely  exempt  from  disease.  It  is  the  time  for 
drill,  for  practice,  for  discipHne,  and  even  for  drudgery. 
This  is  in  no  way  contradictory  to  the  doctrine  of 
spontaneity  advocated  for  the  preceding  period.  The 
conditions  of  hfe  which  have  just  been  enumerated 
show  that  the  child  does  not  now  run  the  risk  of  ar- 
rested development  as  heretofore.  In  the  discussions 
of  the  spontaneity  and  natural  interest  of  the  child, 
one  very  important  chapter  of  psychology  is  too  little 
considered.  This  is  the  dependence  of  interest  upon 
attention.  The  emphasis  is  almost  always  placed  upon 
the  obverse  proposition  that  children  attend  to  what- 
ever they  have  an  interest  in,  but  it  is  just  as  true  that 
they  are  apt  to  become  interested  in  whatever  they 
attend  to.  Owing  to  the  conditions  of  development, 
in  the  stage  up  to  seven  let  them  attend  for  most  part 
to  those  things  which  attract  them  without  assistance, 
and  for  this  later  stage  of  youth  let  them  attend  to 
those  things  which  serve  as  the  alphabets  of  formal 
school  work,  even  though  at  times  their  interest  in 
some  lines  must  be  induced  by  attention  to  them. 

Many  lines  of  work  which  the  child  was  capable 
of  pursuing  only  incidentally  in  the  previous  stage 


178         The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

should  now  be  taken  up  in  earnest,  while  the  things 
he  has  been  doing  he  should  in  a  degree  continue 
to  do. 

Nature  study  should  not  be  supplanted  by  arith- 
metic, and  the  story  will  still  have  its  place  in  the 
curriculum,  but  the  studies  will  be  readjusted  so  that 
the  course  will  be  strengthened  by  the  addition  of 
subjects.  Reading  should  now  be  made  one  of  the 
daily  assigned  tasks.  The  average  child  by  this  time 
possesses  the  mental  and  physical  strength  and  control 
which  will  enable  him  to  use  the  instruments  of  read- 
ing as  a  source  of  enjoyment  and  information  with- 
out endangering  his  health  and  robbing  him  of  time 
that  could  be  used  much  more  profitably  in  other 
ways.  The  child  of  nine  or  ten  will  not  consume 
all  his  energy  in  holding  the  book  open,  keeping  the 
place,  and  interpreting  the  thought.  The  end  to  be  at- 
tained should  be  facility  in  reading  rather  than  ability 
to  pronounce  polysyllables.  To  this  end  there  should 
be  accessible  to  the  child  a  well- selected  list  of  books 
bearing  upon  a  great  variety  of  subjects  of  human 
and  especially  of  childish  interest,  and  he  should 
have  perfect  freedom  in  the  selection  of  his  reading 
material.  A  great  amount  of  oral  reading  should  be 
encouraged.     Facility   to   catch   the   thought   and   to 


The  Pedagogy  of  Youth  179 

express  it  intelligently  must  be  sought.  The  aim 
should  not  be  to  develop  critics,  but  to  master  the  sub- 
ject as  a  tool ;  to  become  proficient  in  the  use  of  it 
as  a  joiner  is  in  the  use  of  his  chisel.  It  need  hardly 
be  said  that  the  child's  opportunity  for  such  drill  is 
not  hmited  to  his  reading  and  story  books,  but  that 
every  book  he  uses,  regardless  of  subject-matter, 
serves  equally  well.  If  the  time  given  to  reading 
before  the  child  is  seven  years  old  were  given  to  real 
things  in  which  he  has  a  lively  interest,  as  was  sug- 
gested in  the  discussion  of  work  for  that  stage,  he 
would  bring  such  a  fund  of  information  and  interest 
to  his  reading  work  at  nine  years  of  age  that  the  prob- 
lem of  method  in  teaching  reading  would  practically 
solve  itself.  It  has  been  demonstrated  over  and  over 
again  that  the  way  for  an  adult  to  get  a  working  mas- 
tery of  a  language  is  to  become  absorbingly  interested 
in  the  subject  written  in  that  language.  And  so  it 
is  with  the  child.  If  he  can  arrive  at  this  stage  with 
a  first-hand  knowledge  of  and  interest  in  rivers  and 
hills,  flowers  and  trees,  birds  and  bugs,  animals  and 
people  of  all  sorts,  reading  will  be  a  key  whose  use 
he  will  not  be  long  in  learning. 

Arithmetic  also   should   cease  to  be  an  incidental 
study  and  should  become  one  of  the  regular  studies 


i8o        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

of  the  programme.  The  child  now  possesses  a  fair 
degree  of  brain  functioning  power,  and  the  abihty  to 
direct  his  attention  and  to  carry  on,  in  a  simple  way 
at  least,  the  processes  of  abstraction,  association,  and 
generalization.  He  also  has  physical  development 
sufficient  to  use  the  materials  of  arithmetic  to  some 
purpose  and  without  injury  to  himself.  The  aim  at 
this  time  in  arithmetic  should  be  a  mastery  of  the 
fundamentals,  the  estabHshment  of  the  alphabets  of 
arithmetic.  For  two  reasons  this  should  be  done. 
There  will  never  be  a  time  when  the  child  can  do  this 
kind  of  work  better  than  he  can  now ;  and  advance 
in  the  subject  is  absolutely  hopeless  without  it.  The 
child  must  learn  to  read  and  write  numbers,  whole 
numbers,  fractions,  decimals,  and  denominate  numbers. 
He  must  learn  the  addition  and  the  multiplication 
tables  until,  shuffle  them  however  you  will,  they  will 
be  as  familiar  to  him  as  his  own  name.  He  must  be- 
come thoroughly  at  home  in  the  tables  of  denominate 
numbers.  No  effort  should  be  made  to  put  the  child 
through  the  book  or  to  make  a  mathematician  of  him. 
He  should  not  be  held  so  much  for  his  method  as  for 
his  work.  He  should  not  be  held  for  the  logic  of  his 
work  but  for  the  performance  of  it.  He  is  not  neces- 
sarily ignorant  of  his  work  because  he  cannot  explain 


The  Pedagogy  of  Youth  i8i 

it.  The  aim  in  arithmetic  at  this  stage  should  be 
drill  upon  the  fundamentals  until  the  child  uses  them 
with  as  much  ease  as  he  feeds  himself. 

The  foreign  languages  should  be  taken  up  at  this 
time.  Indeed,  if  the  child  is  so  fortunately  situated 
as  to  hear  these  languages,  or  if  skillful  teachers  can 
be  secured,  they  may  be  taken  up  much  earlier.  But 
under  no  conditions  should  they  be  allowed  to  be  de- 
ferred to  a  later  time  than  this.  Observation  and 
testimony  both  show  that  seldom  is  a  person  who  be- 
gins the  study  of  a  foreign  language  at  a  later  stage 
entirely  free  from  the  accent  pecuHar  to  his  own  lan- 
guage and  in  every  way  as  proficient  as  a  native. 
This  is  the  time  when  children  manufacture  language; 
when  they  speak  the  so-called  *'pig  Latin";  when  they 
distort  their  words  and  sentences ;  when  they  com- 
municate in  abbreviations ;  when  they  use  secret 
language ;  when  they  begin  to  talk  by  gestures  and 
use  the  deaf  and  dumb  alphabet.  It  is  the  ripe  time 
for  the  grafting  on  of  new  modes  of  expression.  The 
wisest  and  most  successful  teachers  of  foreign  lan- 
guages advocate  its  study  at  this  time,  and  some  of 
them  even  earher.  As  in  the  use  of  the  reading  and 
the  arithmetic  book,  so  here  the  child  is  able  to  use 
the  materials  necessary  for  such  study.    The  thing  to 


1 82        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

be  aimed  at  is  facility.  The  conversational  method 
should  be  used.  Whoever  cannot  teach  by  this 
method  should  be  considered  unfit  for  the  modern 
languages,  as  one  who  does  not  know  the  multipli- 
cation table  without  the  book  is  unfit  to  teach  arith- 
metic. Correct  forms  should  be  insisted  upon  from 
the  start.  This  end  will  not  be  attained  so  much 
through  a  grind  upon  technical  grammar  as  by  reading 
and  hearing  good  forms  and  exercise  in  the  use  of 
them.  The  ideal  for  the  foreign  languages  at  this 
time  will  be  much  as  the  ideal  for  the  mother  tongue 
was  in  the  earlier  stage,  and,  indeed,  as  it  is  for  the 
most  part  in  this  stage:  saturation^ in  good  forms ,  both 
oral  and  written,  with  perfect  freedom  of  expression. 

The  work  in  nature  study  will  serve  as  the  most 
natural  introduction  to  the  study  of  geography.  The 
child's  interest  in  his  natural  environment  will  be  ex- 
tended to  an  interest  in  nature  in  general.  Through 
his  knowledge  of  and  interest  in  the  plants  and  ani- 
mals of  his  own  region,  he  can  easily  be  led  into  a 
study  of  the  fauna  and  flora  of  different  countries, 
and  this  will  in  its  turn  serve  as  an  excellent  introduc- 
tion to  the  study  of  biology  a  little  later.  In  the  same 
way  an  interest  in  the  mineral  world  will  bring  him 
naturally  to  the  study  of  geology.    The  child  knows 


The  Pedagogy  of  Youth  183 

that  many  things  which  he  consumes  in  the  way  of 
food  and  clothing  are  not  produced  at  home  and  he 
also  knows  from  his  previous  work  in  nature  study 
that  these  things  have  their  origin  in  plants  and  ani- 
mals. Here  is  an  additional  incentive  to  study  the 
plants  and  animals  of  different  regions,  but  it  serves 
its  highest  ends  as  an  introduction  to  the  study  of  the 
two  great  geographical  topics  of  commerce  and  manu- 
facture. No  more  dreary  task  was  ever  assigned  a 
child  than  the  one  of  committing  to  memory  outright 
all  the  agricultural  and  manufactured  products  of  the 
different  states  in  Asia  or  the  imports  and  exports  of 
Australia.  And  no  more  valuable  or  absorbingly  in- 
teresting piece  of  work  can  be  undertaken  than  the 
tracing  out  of  the  process  that  resulted  in  the  shoes  or 
the  hat  that  he  wears,  or  the  salt  and  pepper,  that  he 
eats.  Instead  of  getting  a  few  isolated  facts  which  are 
dismissed  after  the  recitation  for  others  just  as  value- 
less, the  child  would  thus  get  things  in  their  relations, 
and  the  phases  of  original  production,  transportation, 
and  manufacture  would  signify  something  to  him. 

Without  any  attempt  at  philosophizing — a  thing  to  be 
studiously  avoided  at  this  time — questions  which  arise 
in  the  mind  of  the  child  are,  "Why  don't  they  raise 
pepper  and  cotton  in  New  England?"  —  "Why  is  the 


184        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

meat  that  I  eat  carried  from  the  Mississippi  Valley?" 
—  "How  is  it  that  the  people  in  the  plains  and  their 
neighbors  on  the  mountain  side  produce  such  widely 
different  things?"  —  "Why  is  Vancouver  so  much 
warmer  than  Labrador?"  It  need  hardly  be  said 
that  such  questions  show  that  the  time  is  ripe  for  the 
study  of  climatic  conditions  —  the  significance  of  al- 
titude, latitude,  ocean  currents,  rehef,  contour,  move- 
ments of  the  earth,  the  change  of  seasons,  and  all  the 
geographical  conditions  which  make  the  products  of 
one  region  differ  so  widely  from  those  of  another.  The 
study  of  the  rehef  of  a  country,  its  climate,  and  the  like, 
paves  the  way  to  the  geographical  study  which  is  the 
basis  for  history  work.  Children  at  this  age  can  be  led 
to  see  and  to  have  great  interest  in  seeing  why,  for 
example,  lUinois  does  not  extend  a  Httle  farther  west, 
Indiana  a  Httle  farther  south,  and  Massachusetts  a 
Httle  farther  east ;  why  ancient  Greece  was  divided  into 
more  than  twenty  states ;  and  why  modern  Switzerland 
is  divided  into  twenty-six  cantons. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  these  suggestions  do  not 
at  all  times  run  paraUel  to  the  logic  of  the  subject, 
but  it  must  also  be  admitted  that  they  run  paraUel  to 
good  pedagogy,  and  we  care  more  for  pedagogy  than 
we  do  for  a  smooth- running  piece  of  logical  machin- 


The  Pedagogy  of  Youth  185 

ery.  The  chief  reason  that  geography  has  been  a 
bore  to  students  and  a  burden  to  teachers  and  a  grief 
to  pedagogues,  is  that  we  have  been  trying  to  organize 
it  and  present  it  logically,  beginning  with  mathematical 
geography,  in  which  the  child  cannot  possibly  have 
any  interest,  and  going  from  this  through  physical  to 
political.  If  the  wits  of  the  pedagogic  and  scientific 
world  were  summoned  to  devise  a  more  unpromising 
and  fruitless  scheme  for  geography  work  than  the  one 
of  following  out  the  logic  of  the  subject,  their  work 
would  surely  result  in  unequivocal  failure. 

In  the  same  way  the  history  stories  and  the  myth 
of  the  earlier  stage  bring  the  child  naturally  to  the 
more  careful  and  detailed  study  of  history.  The 
work  at  this  period  should  be  full  of  human  interest. 
The  time  has  not  yet  come  for  the  more  abstract  study 
of  treaties,  constitutions,  and  government  documents. 
In  the  study  of  American  history  the  beginnings  ap- 
peal strongly  to  children  of  this  age.  Well-written 
stories  of  the  voyages  of  Columbus,  of  the  expeditions 
of  Drake  and  De  Soto,  of  the  work  of  La  Salle  and 
Marquette,  of  the  landing  of  the  Pilgrims,  of  the  found- 
ing of  Jamestown  and  St.  Augustine,  the  winning  of 
the  West,  the  stories  of  David  Crockett,  Daniel  Boone, 
and  George  Rogers  Clark,  have  a  great  fascination 


1 86        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

for  the  child  at  this  age  and  will  be  retained  with  re- 
markable tenacity.  This  is  the  *' blood  and  thunder" 
age  of  the  child.  He  will  now  follow  in  detail  the 
maneuvers  of  an  army,  the  rough  plan  of  a  campaign, 
the  results  of  battles,  with  more  deUght  and  often  with 
more  accuracy  than  he  will  at  a  later  stage.  One 
reason  why  so  much  time  is  given  by  older  students 
to  wars  instead  of  to  interpretation  and  historical 
documents  (on  the  ground  that  there  is  no  time  for  the 
latter)  is  that  the  wars  were  not  taught  when  they 
should  have  been  taught.  Any  normal  child  who  has 
had  rational  training  will,  at  the  age  of  ten,  read  about 
the  battles  of  the  American  Revolution  from  Lexing- 
ton and  Concord  to  Yorktown  with  approximately  as 
much  understanding  as  he  will  at  twenty,  and  with 
infinitely  more  pleasure  and  enthusiasm.  Only  let 
the  history  be  authentic  and  well  written,  and  do  not 
deal  it  out  piecemeal,  but  let  it  be  read,  a  whole  cam- 
paign or  a  whole  war  at  a  time.  No  wonder  a  child 
loses  interest  and  enthusiasm  when  the  lesson  closes 
in  the  middle  of  a  retreat,  and  he  is  punished  for  read- 
ing beyond  the  prescribed  limits  of  the  assignment. 

Biography  should  constitute  a  large  part  of  the 
history  course  at  this  time.  The  strong  interest  in 
human  life  and  activity  so  characteristic  of  the  earlier 


The  Pedagogy  of  Youth  187 

stage  has  not  waned.  A  majority  of  our  children 
come  from  the  public  schools  after  three  or  four  years 
spent  in  the  study  of  some  text- book  in  history  with- 
out any  very  definite  idea  of  the  subject.  If  we  would 
but  take  advantage  of  their  normal  interests  and  intro- 
duce them  to  the  lives  of  the  men  and  the  women  who 
have  made  history,  the  results  obtained  would  be  more 
in  proportion  to  the  time  and  energy  spent.  It  would 
be  unwise  perhaps  to  advocate  biography  exclusively 
for  this  stage,  but  I  have  no  doubt  that  if  the  average 
ten-year-old  child  could  have  access  to  the  biographies 
of  twenty  of  the  most  influential  citizens  of  our  coun- 
try, representatives  of  different  times  and  movements, 
his  real  knowledge  of  history  would  be  as  far  in  excess 
of  what  it  usually  is  as  a  mountain  exceeds  a  mole 
hill.  In  the  Hfe  of  Washington  alone  he  would  be 
introduced  to  colonial  government,  the  French  and 
Indian  War,  attempts  at  union,  the  colonial  and  conti- 
nental congress,  the  various  grievances  of  the  colonies, 
the  Declaration  of  Independence,  government  un- 
der the  Articles  of  Confederation,  the  Revolutionary 
War,  the  adoption  of  the  Constitution,  the  birth  of  the 
government,  the  division  of  the  people  into  parties, 
and  many  other  facts  of  history.  The  aim  must  be 
to  present  the  work  in  a  connected  form.    It  will  be 


1 88        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

time  enough  to  cross-section  it  and  bring  together 
everything  that  happened  everywhere  in  a  given  year, 
after  the  children  have  the  longitudinal  lines  laid. 
We  must  have  the  historical  warp  before  we  try  to  put 
in  the  historical  woof. 

Manual  work  adapted  to  the  development  of  the 
child  should  constitute  a  regular  part  of  the  programme 
during  this  stage.  Just  what  this  work  should  be, 
external  circumstances  and  the  interest  and  abiUty  of 
the  child  must  determine,  but  in  most  cases  drawing, 
carving,  and  similar  exercises  requiring  not  too  fine 
an  adjustment  of  the  muscles  are  desirable.  And 
this  is  above  all  things  the  time  for  practice  and  drill 
in  these  Hnes  of  muscular  activity  that  are  to  become 
habitual.  The  child  who  is  to  become  an  expert 
pianist  or  vioHnist,  for  example,  should  devote  these 
years  to  laborious  drill  upon  these  instruments.  Work 
in  voice  culture  should  be  begun  at  this  time,  although 
judicious  care  needs  to  be  exercised  later  to  prevent 
permanent  injury  when  the  voice  is  "changing." 
The  child  who  is  to  have  complete  mastery  of  his  body, 
of  the  physical  movements,  must  not  neglect  the  work 
in  physical  culture.  At  no  time  in  one's  life  is  it  so 
true  as  at  this  period,  that  "as  you  live  now  will  deter- 
mine how  you  will  always  live.'^ 


The  Pedagogy  of  Youth  189 

In  the  pedagogical  discussions  of  this  book  dogmatism 
has  been  studiously  avoided.  It  would  argue  a  lack  of 
comprehension  of  the  entire  subject  to  say  that  at  a  given 
time  such  and  such  parts  of  such  and  such  subjects,  and 
nothing  else,  should  be  studied.  The  attempt  has  been 
merely  to  show  that  many  things  the  schools  are  trying 
to  do  at  certain  times  are  out  of  place,  and  to  show 
what  would  be  the  better  things  to  do.  I  have,  there- 
fore, in  displacing  some  of  the  standard  studies 
(reading,  arithmetic,  etc.)  before  seven  years  of  age, 
suggested  some  lines  of  work  that  are  suitable  for  this 
time,  without  drawing  a  Une  between  the  things  that 
must,  and  must  not,  be  done.  Indeed,  it  would  be 
strange  if  there  are  not  many  things  unnoticed  in  that 
discussion  which  should  have  a  place  in  the  curriculum. 
The  purpose  was  simply  to  work  out  the  principle 
and  illustrate  rather  fully.  And  so,  in  the  discussion 
of  work  for  this  stage  from  nine  to  twelve  or  thirteen, 
it  cannot  be  said  what  are  all  the  things  that  may  be 
done  and  all  that  may  not.  But  I  have  taken  up  the 
subjects  that  were  discarded  in  the  previous  stage  and 
have  tried  to  show  that  they  should  now  have  a  promi- 
nent place  in  the  curriculum,  and  have  made  sugges- 
tions as  to  the  nature  of  all  the  work  for  the  entire 
period  without  any  attempt  to  go  into  details. 


190        The  Basis  of  Practical  Teaching 

The  observations  and  studies  have  led  to  this  con- 
clusion in  regard  to  the  work  for  the  two  stages  ending 
at  seven  or  eight  and  twelve  or  thirteen  respectively: 
that  the  work  in  the  earHer  stage  as  a  rule  is  too 
heavy  and  that  too  much  is  expected  of  the  child; 
and  that  the  work  of  the  later  stage  is  too  light  and  too 
little  required  of  the  child. 

I  wish,  in  conclusion,  to  emphasize  the  fact  that 
many  of  the  fundamentals  in  training  of  all  kinds 
can  be  gotten  only  through  service,  through  long- con- 
tinued appHcation;  and  that  there  is  no  time  in  the 
life  of  the  individual  so  well  suited — from  the  stand- 
points of  mental  capital  and  development,  and  phys- 
ical capital  and  development — to  drill  work  as  the 
years  just  preceding  the  dawn  of  adolescence. 


THIS  BOOK  IS  DUE  ON  THE  I^ST  DATE 
STAMPED  BELOW 

to  $1.00  per  voJumTafter  the  s&  V^'""!,-  '"«Sng 
demand  may  be  renewed  if  L„ii„  ,^''''- .  Boolts  not  in 
expiration  of  loan  period.       "P^''^""""  is  made  before 


/-.rfi  30 
JAN' 


m7 


jut  16  W2* 


OCT  StO  '^"^ 


aUL  86195^ 


£3    231932 


50m-7,'16 


l^n-^  -^^ 


cnT' 


